Robb Forman Dew

Robb Forman Dew
Born(1946-10-26)October 26, 1946
Mount Vernon, Ohio, U.S.
DiedMay 22, 2020(2020-05-22) (aged 73)
Springfield, Massachusetts, U.S.
OccupationWriter
NationalityAmerican
Alma materLouisiana State University
Genres
Notable awardsNational Book Award (1982)
Spouse
​
(m. 1968)​
Children2
ParentsOliver Duane Forman
Helen Ransom Forman
RelativesJohn Crowe Ransom (grandfather)

Robb Forman Dew (October 26, 1946 – May 22, 2020) was an American writer known for fiction that dealt sensitively with the emotions of daily life and the ties that bind people together as families. She described writing as "a strange absorption about this alternate world and the way it mixes with your real life."[1]

Born in Mount Vernon, Ohio, on October 26, 1946, Dew was the daughter of Oliver Duane Forman, a neurosurgeon, and Helen Ransom Forman.[2] Her mother’s parents, Robb Reavill and the poet and critic John Crowe Ransom, lived in nearby Gambier, Ohio, where Ransom taught at Kenyon College and edited the influential Kenyon Review. Growing up, Dew divided her time between Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where her father had his medical practice,[3] and Gambier, where she stayed with her grandparents. In Gambier, she found herself surrounded by poets and writers connected with the Kenyon Review, as well as by friends, colleagues, and former students of her grandfather. One of these former students, Robert Penn Warren, became her godfather.[1]

She attended Louisiana State University[2] for two years. In 1968, she married Charles B. Dew, and the following year moved with him to Columbia, Missouri, where Charles taught history at the University of Missouri. They had two sons, Charles Stephen, born in 1971, and John Forman, born in 1973. In 1977 the family moved to Williamstown, Massachusetts, where Charles B. Dew is now the Ephraim Williams Professor of American History at Williams College.[4]

Her first novel, Dale Loves Sophie to Death, was published in 1981 and won the 1982 National Book Award in category First Novel.[5] The book‘s title was originally graffiti on a railroad bridge (now demolished), just south of Centerburg, Ohio. Central Ohio would be the setting for much of her fiction.

She taught at the Iowa Writer's Workshop, received a Guggenheim fellowship, and was awarded an honorary degree by Kenyon College in 2007.[6]

Robb Forman Dew died in Springfield, Massachusetts on May 22, 2020 due to endocarditis.[7] She was 73 years old.

  1. ^ a b Shoup, Barbara; Denman, Margaret-Love (2009). "Novel Ideas: Contemporary Authors Share the Creative Process". University of Georgia Press. ISBN 9780820332796. Retrieved July 12, 2010.
  2. ^ a b "Author Detail: Robb Forman Dew". Ohio Center for the Book, at the Cleveland Public Library. Retrieved July 12, 2010.
  3. ^ Dew, Robb Forman. "Why I never write about the South: a guest dispatch from Robb Forman Dew". Maude Newton Blog, Occasional literary links, amusements, culture, politics, and rants. Retrieved July 12, 2010.
  4. ^ "History at Williams College, Charles B. Dew". Williams College. Retrieved July 12, 2010.
  5. ^ "National Book Awards – 1982". National Book Foundation. Retrieved February 28, 2012. (With essay by Harold Augenbraum from the Awards 60-year anniversary blog.)
    • First novels or first works of fiction were recognized from 1980 to 1985.
  6. ^ "White House correspondent David Gregory to speak at Commencement". Kenyon College Newsroom. April 2007. Archived from the original on September 28, 2011. Retrieved July 12, 2010.
  7. ^ "Dew, Mount Vernon native and prize-winning novelist, dies". Mount Vernon News. New York. Associated Press. May 29, 2020.