Mr. Jon Hassler, a novelist, lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota and is a Regent's Professor at St. John's University in Collegeville, Minnesota.
Mr. Hassler has received fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and the Minnesota State Arts Board.
Staggerford was chosen Novel of the Year in 1978 by the Friends of American Writers.
Grand Opening was chosen Best Fiction of 1987 by the Society of Midland Authors. A screen version of
A Green Journey was produced in 1988 and shown on NBC starring Angela Lansbury and Denholm Elliott. In 1993, Mr. Hassler was granted an honorary Doctor of Letters degree by Assumption College (Massachusetts), in 1994 by the University of North Dakota, and in 1996 by the University of Notre Dame.
Mr. Hassler, a life-long resident of Minnesota, was born in Minneapolis in 1933, lived his first ten years in Staples and his next eight in Plainview, where he graduated from high school. He attended St. John's University (B.A.) and the University of North Dakota (M.A.) and taught high school English for ten years before joining the faculty at Bemidji State University. It was in 1970, while teaching at Brainerd Community College, he began seriously to write fiction. He has been at St. John's as a writer-in-residence since 1980.
Jon has published many works. This list is not exhaustive.
Staggerford (Scribner, 1977)
Simon's Night
The Love Hunter (William
Morrow, 1981)
A Green Journey
Grand Opening
North of Hope (Ballantine, 1996)
Dear James
Rookery Blues
The Dean's List (Ballantine, 1998)
Four Miles to Pinecone
Jemmy
The New Woman (to be published
by Viking in December 2005)
The Staggerford Murders
Nancy Clancy's Nephew (Plume,
2004)
The Staggerford Flood
Mr. Hassler has published a book named The Staggerford
Journal (Ballantine, 1999) which is about his experience
writing Staggerford.
Mr. Hassler wrote a novella named Underground Christmas,
two books of short stories which are Keepsakes and Other Stores and
Rufus at the Door and Other Stories and a book of essays named Good
People (Loyola, 2001).
"Stories Teachers Tell" (Nodin, 2004) is a compilation
of essays by teachers and edited by Jon's wife, Gretchen Kresl Hass.er.
