Daniel Quinn

Born 1935-10-11 Omaha, NE (USA)

Died 2018-02-17
Houston, TX (USA)

Omaha native Quinn attended Creighton Prep and studied at St. Louis University and the University of Vienna. He attempted to become a Trappist monk but was discouraged from doing so by his spiritual supervisor, Thomas Merton. He was a journalist, free-lance writer, social critic, and novelist.

Quinn's 1992 novel, Ishmael was a unique expression of Quinn's unconventional understanding of how humanity fails to understand nature and the real world in which we dwell. Ishmael attracted both admiration and controversy. The novel was awarded the $500,000 Turner Tomorrow Award, at sponsor Ted Turner's insistence, after the committee of judges dissolved in controversy. One judge, author William Styron, said while it was worthy, it was worth nowhere near the prize amount, if indeed any one book might be. Ray Bradbury disagreed and called the novel "a fine piece of work." The novel made Quinn's reputation as a writer. He had been working on versions of it as early as the 1960s. When singer-activist Pete Seeger was interviewed about his favorite books he said that "Ishmael is the book I buy 10 at a time and give away to all sorts of folks."

Places Lived

Omaha, NE
Albuquerque, NM
Kentucky
Austin, TX
Houston, TX
Chicago, IL
St. Louis, MO
Vienna, AUSTRIA

Author Of

Fiction
Journalism
Nonfiction

Keywords

Environmentalism; Future; Novels

Education

Creighton Preparatory School, Omaha, NE
Bachelor's Degree in English, cum laude, 1957, Loyola University, Chicago, IL
Saint Louis University, St. Louis, MO
University of Vienna, Vienna, AUSTRIA

Occupation

Trappist monk
Free-lance Writer

Places Worked

Quinn ran a small newspaper in Albuquerque, NM

Honors

Winner of $500,000 (Ted) Turner Tomorrow Award, 1992

Associations

Former Trappist monk under direction of Thomas Merton, poet and religious author

Bibliography

Dreamer. 1988.
Ishmael. 1992.
Providence: The Story of a Fifty-Year Vision Quest. 1995.
The Story of B: Adventure of the Mind and Spirit. 1996.
My Ishmael: A Sequel. 1997.
A Newcomer's Guide to the Afterlife. 1997. (with Tom Whalen)
Beyond Civilization. 1999.
The Man Who Grew Young. 2001.
The Holy. 2002.
Tales of Adam. 2005.
Work, Work, Work. 2006.
If They Give You Lined Paper, Write Sideways. 2007.
Moral Ground: Ethical Action for a Planet in Peril. 2010.
At Woomeroo. 2012.
The Invisibility of Success. 2014.
The Teachings. 2014.

We appreciate corrections and additions to our information about authors, but please read the following guidelines and caveats carefully.

The Nebraska Authors database is based on publicly available sources. Unless you are the author contacting us in person, it helps us if you cite the source or sources of your information. We cannot include unsourced information in the database.
We may be appreciative of information we choose not to include in the publicly available database.
To include an image on an author profile, please send jpg attachment to nebraskaauthors@lincoln.ne.gov. A photo-release agreement is required before the image will be published on this site.
Because of the way we are staffed, expect corrections or additions to take time, sometimes up to three months.
While we initially included some actual links to external URLs in the database, we will in the future no longer provide functioning links. We will instead record the presence of specific external materials in language that we hope will help intelligent users find it themselves. Web rot, in which actual materials remain online but undergo changes in their URLs, is too demanding in terms of staff time for us to hope to keep external links current.

Please copy, fill out the form below, and email it to NebraskaAuthors@lincoln.ne.gov to suggest a change.