Nebraska Authors

Winslow attended The University of Nebraska-Lincoln, beginning in the Journalism program in 1971. He transferred to the University Studies program to pursue African History, graduating in 1975. He married a Nebraskan, moved back east, and worked as a private investigator, theater manager and safari tour manager in Kenya. Winslow returned to UNL where he received a Masters Degree in Military History in 1982. He has co-authored a book with UNL Professor Pete Maslowski, Looking for a Hero: Staff Sergeant Joe Ronnie Hooper and the Vietnam War, 2005. He moved to California and has become a very successful writer of crime and thriller novels.

In the 1970s Winslow toured and performed throughout Nebraska with the Pied Pipers, a theatrical group that drew large audiences, mainly of children but also adults. He told an interviewer that he hated the film adaptation of his 2010 book Bobby Z.. Savages has been called a break-out book by reviewers, and a "stylistic leap" by Winslow himself.

See also David Wiltse, Alex Kava.

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The legendary king of the late-night TV talk show, Johnny Carson, was born in Iowa and moved to Norfolk, NE with his family in the 1930s. Norfolk recognizes Carson as its 'most famous former resident' and has gone to great efforts to preserve his childhood home. Carson used his homespun, Mid-Western manner combined with a sophisticated wit and genuine hero worship in his interactions with big name stars on the Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. Warmed by his charm, the icons of pop culture let their guard down, told stories, and made small talk with Carson. His program made viewers feel as if they were eavesdropping on private conversations. Stand-up comic Drew Carey said of Carson, "He seemed genuinely nice to everybody and interested in everybody, what they had to say... you never saw him be rude or flippant or just not care or shut down on a guest, so he was more the Nebraska-guy than anything that I saw on TV." Carson's legacy to his home state includes the work of the John W. Carson Foundation supporting children, education and health services, focusing on the Los Angeles area and Nebraska. His papers are held by the Library of Congress.

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Jim Thompson came to himself as a writer in Lincoln in the early 1930s, under the tutelege of Lowry Wimberly. He is considered one of "Wimberly's Boys." Growing up in Oklahoma, in the Nebraska Sandhills, and in Texas, Thompson knew an unforgiving world of labor and want that colored his writing in later years.

Thompson's mother was from the Nebraska Sandhills. When Thompson first enrolled in the University it was in the Ag College, later he enrolled in the English department. After graduation, he served as Director of the Federal Writers Project in Oklahoma in the 1930's. Thompson married Alberta Hesse, a Lincoln, Nebraska native, in 1931. In 1942, he wrote his first book with autobiographical references to Lincoln. Between 1942 and 1973, he published 29 novels, all but three in paperback form as originals. Thompson suffered a stroke in 1975 and died two years later. Thompson's work experienced a late 20th century revival and re-publication as his novels served as the basis for film scripts: 'The Grifters', 'The Kill-Off' and 'After Dark, My Sweet' all appeared on the screen in the 1990s.

Along with Mignon Eberhart, Thompson was one of the great early giants of American crime fiction to come from Nebraska. Yet the contrast between the two Nebraska writers could not be greater, where Eberhart's heroines find their way, in some crisis or exotic locale, to middle class dreams and ideals, Jim Thompson's stories savage middle class ideals and pursue them into nightmares. Writer Donald Westlake was a particular admirer of Thompson's work. In one of Thompson's publisher's blurbs, Stephen King calls Thompson "my favorite crime writer."

Novels which became films: The Killing, 1956, directed by Stanley Kubrick; Paths of Glory,1957, directed by Kubrick; The Getaway,1972, directed by Sam Peckinpaw; The Killer Inside Me,1975, directed by Burt Kennedy; Serie Noire, 1978, directed by Alain Corneau; The French film Coup De Torchon ('Clean Slate,'), 1980 was adapted from Pop. 1280, directed by Bertrand Tavernier, it was nominated for an Academy Award in 1982 for Best Foreign Film; The Grifters 1991, adapted from Thompson's novel by Donald Westlake.

See the biography by Robert Polito, Savage Art: A biography of Jim Thompson, 1995.
Also David A. Taylor, Soul of a People: The WPA Writers' Project Uncovers Depression America, 2009, a book which accompanies the NEH funded documentary film by the same title, which features Thompson.

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