John Knowles author page

John Knowles biography

John Knowles was an American author best known for his debut novel, A Separate Peace (1959), a staple in American literature curricula. Born in Fairmont, West Virginia, in 1926, he attended Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, graduating in 1945. His experiences at Exeter, particularly during a summer session, informed the setting and atmosphere of his most renowned work.

After a brief stint in the U.S. Army Air Forces at the end of World War II, Knowles enrolled at Yale University, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1949. During his time at Yale, he contributed to the campus humor magazine The Yale Record and served on the editorial board of the Yale Daily News.

Knowles began his professional writing career as a reporter for the Hartford Courant and later served as an assistant editor for Holiday magazine. Encouraged by playwright Thornton Wilder, he pursued fiction writing, leading to the publication of A Separate Peace. The novel, set in a fictional New England preparatory school during World War II, explores themes of friendship, jealousy, and the loss of innocence. It received critical acclaim and was awarded the William Faulkner Foundation Award in 1961.

Following the success of his debut, Knowles authored several other novels, including Morning in Antibes (1962), Indian Summer (1966), The Paragon (1971), and Peace Breaks Out (1981), the latter revisiting the setting of his first novel from a different perspective. He also published a collection of short stories, Phineas (1968), and a travelogue, Double Vision (1964).

In addition to his writing, Knowles held academic positions as a writer-in-residence at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and at Princeton University during the 1960s. In the 1990s, he taught creative writing at Florida Atlantic University.

John Knowles passed away in 2001 at the age of 75.