ROBERT OLEN BUTLER

Born in Granite City (1945), Illinois , Butler attended Northwestern University as a theater major (B.S., 1967) and then switched to playwriting at the University of Iowa (M.A., 1969). He rose to the rank of sergeant in the Army Military Intelligence while serving in Vietnam (1969-1972). There he became a fluent speaker of the language and came to understand and honor Vietnamese culture.

In 1972 he married the poet Marylin Geller and they have one child. After the usual collection of odd jobs, including steel mill labor, taxi driving, and substitute teaching in high schools, Butler joined Fairfield Publications and worked on such trade publications as Electronic News. He became editor-in-chief of Energy User News in 1975.

Although his first published novel, The Alleys of Eden (1981), was rejected twenty-one times before it was finally published, it was well received and even nominated for a number of literary prizes. Sun Dogs (1982), as did his first novel, makes use of Butler 's Vietnam experiences, and his collection of short stories, A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain (1992), reveals his remarkable ability to identify with the Vietnamese refugees trying to remake their lives in the United States . In a review of Butler 's first novel, the writer praised Butler 's "ability to catch tiny shifts of feeling, momentary estrangements, sudden dislocations of mood, a tool as valuable to the novelist as a scalpel to the surgeon." A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain was awarded the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

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