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Theodore Weesner

Author

Bio

Theodore “Ted” Weesner died in 2015. Known as the “Writer’s Writer” by the larger literary community, his novels and short works were published to great critical acclaim.

Born in Flint, Michigan, to an alcoholic father and teenage mother who abandoned him at aged one, he spent a large part of his childhood in an unofficial foster home of an immobile woman of over five hundred pounds. This, however, gave him and his elder brother, Jack, a degree of freedom to explore and have a wide variety of childhood adventures. He nevertheless became introspective as a teenager, with a rebellious streak, which led to him not graduating from high school and also becoming involved in petty crime. Eventually returning to the care of his father, he finally took off on his own when he lied about his age and joined the army at seventeen.

The army provided the discipline previously lacking in Weesner’s life, and, whilst serving, he earned a high school equivalency diploma, which allowed him later attend Michigan State University, and later earn an MFA from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

His first novel, The Car Thief was published after excerpts had appeared in the New Yorker, Esquire and Atlantic Monthly. His short works have previously been published in the New Yorker, Esquire, Saturday Evening Post, Atlantic Monthly and Best American Short Stories. Likewise, his novels appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Harper’s, the Boston Globe, USA Today, the Chicago Tribune, and the Los Angeles Times.

During his lifetime Weesner received the New Hampshire Literary Award for Lifetime Achievement, his novel The Car Thief won the Great Lakes Writers Prize, and The True Detective was cited in 1987 by the American Library Association as a notable book of that year. He was also the recipient of the Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Humanities award.

A perfectionist, Theodore Weesner did meticulous research, and was never afraid of going back over and re-writing his work before publication, believing in the maxim “the great novel isn’t written, it's rewritten.”

Theodore Weesner Books

Novel Ideas

Barbara Shoup