Author Profile: Daniel Woodrell is an American novelist and short story writer.
Name: Daniel Woodrell
Timeline:
1987 – Woe to Live On
1998 – Tomato Red
2001 – The Death of Sweet Mister
2006 – Winter’s Bone
2013 The Maid’s Version
Background: Daniel Woodrell was born on 4th March 1953, in Springfield, Missouri, in the West Plains, southwestern corner of the state in the United States. He is 67 years old. He spent his younger days in Missouri, then dropped out of high school and joined the Marines. He earned the BA degree from the University of Kansas and the MFA degree from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. On December 17, 2016, Daniel Woodrell has been awarded an honorary doctorate. He is married to Katie Estill, a novelist.
Genre: Crime fiction, ‘country noir’. His writing has been categorized very often by reviewers with the term ‘country noir’.
Literary Contributions: He has been nominated for the Edgar Award for Best Short Story and the Hammett Prize.
Daniel Woodrell has written nine novels with one collection of short stories and many of them set in the Missouri Ozarks. Daniel describes ‘Give Us a Kiss’, his novel in 1996 by coining the phrase ‘country noir’.
Daniel Woodrell’s movies include Tomato Red, Ride with the Devil and Winter’s Bone.
Unique Stylistic Features: Most of the eight novels of Woodrell are set in a landscape called Missouri Ozarks which he was familiar with right from his childhood days. Novels created by Woodrell are based on crime, a style he termed as ‘country noir’. His commentators have adopted this phrase on his work. According to reviews by a fellow author and fan named William Boyle, Woodrell uses the lens of his place while showing his interests for the whole of humanity. He mentions that Woodrell has got everything in doubles, including the energy, sense of place, plot, language, tension etc.
Woodrell has adapted three novels for films besides identifying readers for his fiction work. Woe to Live On (1987) was Woodrell’s second novel adapted for the film Ride with the Devil (1999) directed by Ang Lee. Winter’s Bone (2006) was adapted by director and writer Debra Granik for a film with a similar title which was released commercially in June 2010 after it won the Grand Jury Prize for Dramatic film and 2 awards at the Sundance Film Festival. It received 5 Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture for being the best American classic and best films of the year.
Tomato Red (1998) was adapted for a 2017 feature film by Irish director and writer Juanita Wilson which was released in March 2017 in Ireland. It was nominated for Best Film and Irish Film & Television Awards during that year. On 23rd April 2017 its debut took place in the US at the Newport Beach International Film Festival.
