Crowley is best known as the author ofLittle, Big (1981), a work which receivedWorld Fantasy Award for Best Novel and has been called "a neglected masterpiece" byHarold Bloom,[1] and hisÆgypt series of novels which revolve around the same themes ofHermeticism, memory, families and religion. Some of his nonfiction writing has appeared bimonthly inHarper's Magazine in the form of his "Easy Chair" column, which ended in 2016.
John Crowley was born inPresque Isle, Maine, in 1942; his father was then an officer in the US Army Air Corps. He grew up in Vermont, northeastern Kentucky and (for the longest stretch) Indiana, where he went to high school and college. He moved to New York City after college to make movies, and did find work in documentary films, an occupation he still pursues. He published his first novel (The Deep) in 1975, and his twelfth (Ka: Dar Oakley in the Ruin of Ymr) in 2017. Since 1993 he has taught creative writing atYale University.[2] In 1992 he received the Award in Literature from theAmerican Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.
He is also the recipient of anIngram Merrill Foundation grant.James Merrill, the organization's founder, greatly lovedLittle, Big,[4] and wasblurbed praising Crowley on the first edition ofLove & Sleep. His recent novels areThe Translator, recipient of the Premio Flaiano (Italy);Lord Byron’s Novel: The Evening Land, which contains an entire imaginary novel by the poet; and the aforementionedFour Freedoms, about workers at an Oklahoma defense plant during World War II. A novella,The Girlhood of Shakespeare's Heroines, appeared in 2002. A museum-quality 25th anniversary edition ofLittle, Big, featuring the art ofPeter Milton and a critical introduction by Harold Bloom, is now complete.[5]
Crowley's short fiction is collected in three volumes:Novelty (containing the World Fantasy Award-winning novellaGreat Work of Time),Antiquities, andNovelties & Souvenirs, an omnibus volume containing nearly all his short fiction through its publication in 2004. A collection of essays and reviews entitledIn Other Words was published in early 2007.
Most of the ideas he has for books occur about ten years before he actually starts working on the books.[6]
In 1989 Crowley and his wife Laurie Block foundedStraight Ahead Pictures to produce media (film, video, radio and internet) on American history and culture. Crowley has written scripts for short films and documentaries, many historical documentaries for public television; his work has received numerous awards and has been shown at the New York Film Festival, theBerlin Film Festival, and many others. His scripts includeThe World of Tomorrow (on the 1939World's Fair),No Place to Hide (on the bomb shelter obsession),The Hindenburg (for HBO), andFIT: Episodes in the History of the Body (Americanfitness practices and beliefs over the decades; with Laurie Block).[2]
Crowley's correspondence with literary critic Harold Bloom, and their mutual appreciation, led in 1993 to Crowley taking up a post atYale University, where he teaches courses inUtopian fiction, fiction writing, and screenplay writing. Bloom claimed on Contentville.com thatLittle, Big ranks among the five best novels by a living writer, and includedLittle, Big,Ægypt (The Solitudes), andLove & Sleep in his canon of literature (in the appendix toThe Western Canon, 1994). In his Preface toSnake's-Hands, Bloom identifies Crowley as his "favorite contemporary writer", and theÆgypt series as his "favorite romance...afterLittle, Big".
1997:Gone received theLocus Award for Best Short Story[7]
1999: "La Grande oeuvre du temps", theFrench language edition of "Great Work of Time" (translated by Monique LeBailly), won theGrand Prix de l'Imaginaire, Nouvelle étrangère (Grand Prize for translated story)[7][9]
2003:The Translator received the ItalianPremio Flaiano[10]
2018:Ka: Dar Oakley in the Ruin of Ymr received the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award[14]
2021:Kra, Dar Duchesne dans les ruines de l’Ymr, the French language edition ofKa: Dar Oakley in the Ruin of Ymr, received theGrand Prix de l'Imaginaire for Foreign Novel[15]
Ægypt (Bantam, 1987); later revised and republished under intended original title,The Solitudes (The Overlook Press, 2007) — 1988 World Fantasy Award andArthur C. Clarke Award nominee[7]
Love & Sleep (Bantam, 1994); revised edition (The Overlook Press, 2008) — 1995 WFA nominee[7]
Dæmonomania (Bantam, 2000); revised edition (The Overlook Press, 2008)
Crowley's short story "Flint and Mirror" (2018) was presented as "recently discovered among uncatalogued papers of the novelist Fellowes Kraft" (one of theÆgypt's protagonists).[16][17] He expanded the story into a 2022 novel of the same name,[18] though the link toÆgypt was omitted.
"Antiquities" (1977, inWhispers: An Anthology of Fantasy and Horror)
"Somewhere to Elsewhere" (1978 but printed as 1977, inThe Little Magazine; an earlier draft of part of the first chapter and all of the second chapter ofLittle, Big)
"Where Spirits Gat Them Home" (1978, inShadows anthology; later revised as "Her Bounty to the Dead")
"The Single Excursion of Caspar Last" (1979, inGallery magazine; later incorporated into "Great Work of Time")
"The Reason for the Visit" (1980, inInterfaces anthology)
"Lost and Abandoned" (1997, inBlack Swan, White Raven anthology)
"An Earthly Mother Sits and Sings" (2000, published as an original chapbook byDreamhaven Press, illustrated byCharles Vess; included intoFlint and Mirror)
"The War Between the Objects and the Subjects" (2002, inJ. K. Potter's Embrace the Mutation anthology)
Novelty, Bantam (1989); collects "The Nightingale Sings At Night", "Great Work of Time", "In Blue" and the previously published "Novelty".
Antiquities: Seven Stories,Incunabula (1993); collects all of his stories to that point which were not included inNovelty.
Novelties and Souvenirs: Collected Short Fiction, Perennial (2004); collects all of his short fiction up to that point, with the exception of "The Girlhood of Shakespeare's Heroines".
Totalitopia, PM Press (2017); collects four stories ("This Is Our Town", "Gone", "In the Tom Mix Museum", "And Go Like This"), three essays and the interview.[20]
And Go Like This: Stories, Small Beer Press (2019); collects all of his short fiction from 2002-2019.
Two Chapters in a Family Chronicle, Ninepin Press (2024).
