The English Department mourns the passing of John Crowley, a brilliant, profoundly original writer who was dedicated member of Creative Writing faculty in an important phase of the program’s development. Here is a link to John’s obituary in the New York Times.
The author of thirteen novels, three collections of short fiction, and two books of essays, John Crowley humbly garnered praise that make most writers swoon, from the Los Angeles Times to the Washington Post. In particular, his novel Little, Big developed a passionate, devoted following. He was the only author who received both the World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement as well as the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Literature.
John joined the faculty in 1993 and retired in 2018, leaving an indelible stamp on the teaching of creative writing at Yale, where he taught fiction writing, fantasy, and screenwriting. Former students described him as “one of the kindest people” they had ever met and “one of the most devoted teachers” they had ever known.
In his novel Ka, one of the characters insists, “We’re made of stories.” John certainly seemed to be. His Faculty Retirement Tribute read in part: “Your capacious imagination has formed complex worlds filled with complex people and revealed the depths of human emotion for countless readers. That imagination keeps moving outward beyond boundaries of field or genre—from speculative to realist to historical fiction, from novels to short stories, from essays on Utopia to articles on the politics of discourse and the discourse of politics. You have written scripts for films and documentaries, many for public television, that have received praise and awards. It seems there is nowhere your mind can’t imagine going, can’t envision exploring.”