Timothy Egan

Timothy Egan
Egan in 2023
Egan in 2023
Born (1954-11-08) November 8, 1954 (age 70)
Seattle, Washington, U.S.
OccupationWriter, journalist, reporter
EducationUniversity of Washington
GenreNon-fiction
Notable worksThe Worst Hard Time
Notable awardsNational Book Award, 2006
PNBA Award, 1991, 2010
Washington State Book Award, 2006, 2010
SpouseJoni Balter[1]
Children2[2]
Website
timothyeganbooks.com

Timothy P. Egan (born November 8, 1954) is an American author, journalist and former op-ed columnist for The New York Times. Egan has written nine books. Egan, a third-generation Westerner, lives in Seattle.

His first book, The Good Rain, won the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award in 1991.[3] For The Worst Hard Time, a 2006 book about people who lived through the Great Depression's Dust Bowl, he won the National Book Award for Nonfiction[4][5] and the Washington State Book Award in History/Biography. His book on the photographer Edward Curtis, Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher, won the 2013 Carnegie Medal for Excellence for nonfiction. The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America (2009)[6] is about the Great Fire of 1910, which burned about three million acres (12,000 km2) and helped shape the United States Forest Service. The book describes some of the political issues facing Theodore Roosevelt. For this work he won a second Washington State Book Award in History/Biography[7] and a second Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award.[8]

In 2001, The New York Times won a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for a series to which Egan contributed, "How Race is Lived in America".[9][10]

In 2023 his book about how the rape and murder of Madge Oberholtzer helped undo the rising KKK tide in the U.S.[11]

  1. ^ "Author biography". Random House. Retrieved December 19, 2010. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  2. ^ "Pulitizer-Prize winner Timothy Egan delivers second Rosamond Gifford lecture in Syracuse", Syracuse.com blog, Syracuse Post-Standard, November 10, 2012
  3. ^ "1991 Book Awards". Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association. Retrieved February 2, 2011. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)[permanent dead link‍]
  4. ^ "National Book Awards – 2006". National Book Foundation; retrieved March 24, 2012.
  5. ^ "2006 National Book Award Winner, Nonfiction". The National Book Foundation. Retrieved February 24, 2009. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  6. ^ Ostler, Jeffrey (Fall 2010). "Review of The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America by Timothy Egan". Oregon Historical Quarterly. 111 (3): 396–98. doi:10.5403/oregonhistq.111.3.0396. JSTOR 10.5403/oregonhistq.111.3.0396.
  7. ^ "'Border Song' and 'The Big Burn' among 2010 Washington State Book Awards". The Seattle Times. September 10, 2010. Retrieved February 2, 2011.
  8. ^ "2010 Book Awards". Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association. Archived from the original on January 11, 2010. Retrieved February 2, 2011.
  9. ^ "National Reporting". Past winners & finalists by category. The Pulitzer Prizes. Retrieved March 24, 2012.
  10. ^ Egan, Timothy. "Contributor biography". The New York Times. Retrieved February 24, 2009.
  11. ^ https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2023/apr/02/in-timothy-egans-new-book-a-fever-in-the-heartland/