W.D. Wetherell
Official Website of the Award Winning Author,
including his novel
A CENTURY OF NOVEMBER
SUBSTACK
Wetherell on Writing
A new monthly column celebrating and defending the art of prose, with thoughts on craft, books, and the writing life
https://wdwetherell.substack.com/
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Novels:
SOUVENIRS (Random House l981 NY)
CHEKHOV'S SISTER (Little, Brown l990 Boston)
THE WISEST MAN IN AMERICA (University Press of New England l995 Hanover; paperback edition University Press of New England l996 Hanover)
MORNING (Pantheon 2001 NY; paperback edition Anchor Books 2002 NY)
A CENTURY OF NOVEMBER (University of Michigan Press 2002 Ann Arbor; paperback edition University of Michigan Press 2005 Ann Arbor)
THE WRITING ON THE WALL (Arcade 2012 NY)
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MACKEN IN LOVE (Audible Original 2018 NY)
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Short story collections:
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THE MAN WHO LOVED LEVITTOWN (University of Pittsburgh Press l985 Pittsburgh; paperback edition Avon Books l985 NY)
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HYANNIS BOAT AND OTHER STORIES (Little, Brown l989 Boston)
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WHEREVER THAT GREAT HEART MAY BE (University Press of New England l996 Hanover)
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HILLS LIKE WHITE HILLS (Southern Methodist University Press 2009 Dallas)
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WHERE WE LIVE (Green Writers Press 2018 Vermont)
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Essay collections:
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VERMONT RIVER (Nick Lyons Books l984 NY; paperback edition Simon and Schuster NY l985; second paperback edition Lyons and Burford l993 NY)
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UPLAND STREAM (Little, Brown l991 Boston; paperback edition Little, Brown l992 NY)
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ONE RIVER MORE (The Lyons Press l998 NY)
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ON ADMIRATION (Skyhorse Press 2010 NY)
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SUMMER OF THE BASS (Skyhorse Press 2015 NY)
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A RIVER TRILOGY (Skyhorse Press 2018 NY)
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Memoirs:
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NORTH OF NOW (The Lyons Press l998 NY; paperback edition The Lyons Press 2000 NY)
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YELLOWSTONE AUTUMN (University of Nebraska Press 2009 Lincoln)
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SOCCER DAD (Skyhorse Press 2008 NY; paperback edition Skyhorse Press 2013 NY)
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Travel and nature:
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THE SMITHSONIAN GUIDES TO NATURAL AMERICA; NORTHERN NEW ENGLAND (Smithsonian Books l995 Washington)
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SMALL MOUNTAINS (Terra Nova 2000 Hanover)
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SMALL WATER (Privately printed Lyme, NH 2022)
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History/Literature:
THIS AMERICAN RIVER; FIVE CENTURIES OF WRITING ABOUT THE CONNECTICUT (Ed.) (University Press of New England 2002 Hanover)
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WHERE WARS GO TO DIE (Skyhorse Press 2016 NY)
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Foreign editions:
LE SOUER DE CHEKHOV (JC Lattes l992 Paris)
UN SIECLE DE NOVEMBRE (Les Allusifs 2006 Paris; paperback edition Le Livre de Poche 2008 Paris.)
A CENTURY OF NOVEMBER (Australia Broadcasting Corporation Books 2007 Sydney)
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BIO
W. D. Wetherell was born in l948, the son of two World War Two vets, his father an army captain, his mother an army nurse. He was raised in suburban Long Island; the proximity of New York City on one hand, and the summers spent at the family summer home on a rural New England lake on the other, were to influence his writing in ways both obvious and subtle. His education owed more to the excellent Hempstead Public Library than it did any conventional schooling; he usually checked out seven or eight books at a time and had them read by the time the week was out.
He always wanted to be a writer, and with his interest in history and current events, journalism or academia might have been the directions he ended up taking. Instead, at the age of fourteen, he fell in love with the great novelists--Melville, Conrad, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky--and made up his mind that writing fiction, serious fiction, was what he wanted to build his life around.
He had already decided, if he was ever lucky enough to get something published, he would use the byline W. D. instead of Walter, in tribute to some of his heroes who also used their initials: Thoreau, Chekhov, Salinger.
He dropped out of college in l967 after one unhappy year, and wrote his first short story working in his parents' basement with a ping-pong table as his desk. His twenties were difficult years, but he never stopped writing, so it's been a continuous working curve from that day to this.
As for supporting himself, he followed the old tradition whereby a writer works only long enough to earn enough money to quit and write until the money runs out. These jobs included working as a salesman at a department store, an editor at a magazine, a tour guide, and as a teacher.
His first published story appeared in l976, eight years after he began writing and many rejections. His first novel, Souvenirs, appeared in l981. Two grants from the National Endowment for the Arts allowed him to devote himself to writing full time, and helped make possible a move to Lyme, NH in l982 with his wife Celeste--and Lyme, the "Upper Connecticut River Valley" of Vermont/New Hampshire, is where he's lived ever since. His daughter Erin was born in l986; his son Matthew in l990.
Wetherell is the author of over twenty books: novels, short story collections, memoirs, essay collections, and books on travel and history. His essays, short stories, and articles have appeared in a wide variety of publications, including The Atlantic, the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, Virginia Quarterly Review, Georgia Review, Appalachia, the Boston Globe, Reader's Digest, Fly-Fisherman, and many more. For eighteen years his essays on travel appeared frequently in The New York Times.
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His autobiographcial short story, "The Bass, the River, and Sheila Mant," telling the story of a fourteen-year old boy who must choose between the girl of his dreams and the fish of his dreams, has been anthologized over twenty times, and appears in many textbooks for middle school, high school, and college English.
Wetherell's awards include two NEA Creative Writing Fellowships, three O'Henry Awards for short stories, the Drue Heinz Literature Prize, the National Magazine Award, the Arnold Gingrich Fly-Fishing Heritage Award, The "Best Short Story" of l993 award from the Catholic Press Association, the Michigan Literary Fiction Award, a National Book Award Nomination, and a New York Times Notable Book of the Year Award in l990. He was Visiting Scholar at the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Center in Italy in l993. In l998, he received the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters allowing him to devote himself exclusively to writing for the next five years.
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In 1985, Wetherell was invited to read from his work at the Library of Congress.
Reviewers and readers, responding to Wetherell's work, have spoken of his wide range of subject matter, approaches, styles, and characterizations, his narrative daring, originality, and compassion,the power and grace of his prose style and the homage he pays, sometimes subtly, sometimes explicitly, to the long literary tradition that has fueled his writing from the start.
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WD Wetherell may be contacted at: