Stephen Dobyns

Author profile

born

February 19, 1941 in Orange, NJ, The United States

gender

male

genre

Poetry, Literature & Fiction, Mystery & Thrillers

About this author

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Dobyns was raised in New Jersey, Michigan, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. He was educated at Shimer College, graduated from Wayne State University, and received an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa in 1967. He has worked as a reporter for the Detroit News.

He has taught at various academic institutions, including Sarah Lawrence College, the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers, the University of Iowa, Syracuse University, and Boston University.

In much of his poetry and some works of non-genre fiction, Dobyns employs extended tropes, using the ridiculous and the absurd as vehicles to introduce more profound meditations on life, love, and art. He shies neither from the low nor from the sublime, and all in a st...more

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Books by Stephen Dobyns

Average rating: 3.84 · 3,423 ratings · 378 reviews · 50 distinct works

	The Church Of Dead Girls 3.59 avg rating — 803 ratings — published 1997 — 18 editions	My rating:
	Best Words, Best Order: Essays on Poetry 3.98 avg rating — 167 ratings — 3 editions	My rating:
	Boy in the Water 3.27 avg rating — 229 ratings — published 1998 — 7 editions	My rating:
	Velocities: New and Selected Poems, 1966-1992 4.30 avg rating — 172 ratings — published 1994 — 3 editions	My rating:
	The Wrestler's Cruel Study 3.84 avg rating — 151 ratings — published 1993 — 2 editions	My rating:
	Cemetery Nights 4.39 avg rating — 96 ratings — published 1987 — 2 editions	My rating:
	Eating Naked: Stories 3.62 avg rating — 101 ratings — 3 editions	My rating:
	Pallbearers Envying the One Who Rides 3.99 avg rating — 70 ratings — published 1999	My rating:
	Cold Dog Soup 3.83 avg rating — 65 ratings — published 1988 — 4 editions	My rating:
	Black Dog, Red Dog 4.09 avg rating — 33 ratings — published 1984 — 2 editions	My rating:

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Series by Stephen Dobyns

Charlie Bradshaw (10 books)
by Stephen Dobyns

3.61 avg rating — 231 ratings

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Quotes by Stephen Dobyns

“These people you used to see every day, friends or acquaintances, after a while they become as distant as any stranger, people you suddenly recall late at night--you remember something they said or something silly that someone once did. For a few moments they completely occupy your mind; then you forget them again.”
― Stephen Dobyns, Eating Naked: Stories

tags: friends

12 people liked it

“Let's say someone has experienced a violent trauma or betrayal: a child has been raped by a parent or has witnessed the destruction of someone he loves or has been so traumatized by the possibility of beatings and punishments that he's afraid to act. If the trauma is great enough, that person's life may become frozen, emotionally frozen even though he still gets up in the morning, is busy all day, and goes to bed at night. But there's this empty space that begins to fill with rage, rage toward everyone - the perpetrator, the people in the world who haven't suffered, even toward himself. (174)”
― Stephen Dobyns, Boy in the Water

10 people liked it

“There are many reasons for violence. This is just something that sometimes happens. We'd see it in treatment centers - the child who'd suffered something awful. Even in the best recovery there'd be a fear that everything would fall apart and they'd become victims again. And their final loyalty was to themselves. They couldn't be forced. They preferred to wreck everything, preferred self-destruction to surrender. (175)”
― Stephen Dobyns, Boy in the Water

6 people liked it

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THE JAMES MASON C...: * WHAT BOOK HAS INFLUENCED YOU MOST?	437	566	Mar 13, 2012 08:19pm
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