StoryLines Midwest

Additional Selected Reading

Novels

• Nelson Algren,
  The Man with the Golden Arm (1949) and
  A Walk on the Wild Side (1956)
• A. Manette Ansay,
  River Angel (1998) and
  Midnight Champagne (2000)
• Harriet Arnow,
  The Dollmaker (1954)
• Charles Baxter,
  The Feast of Love (2000)
• Henry Bellamann,
  Kings Row (1940)
• Saul Bellow,
  The Adventures of Augie March (1953),
  Herzog (1964) and
  Humboldt's Gift (1975)
• T. Coraghessan Boyle,
  The Road to Wellville (1993)
• Gwendolyn Brooks,
  Maud Martha (1953)
• Pearl Cleage,
  What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day (1997)
• Evan S. Connell,
  Mrs. Bridge (1959) and
  Mr. Bridge (1969)
• Jack Conroy,
  The Disinherited (1933)
• Rita Dove,
  Through the Ivory Gate (1992)
• Theodore Dreiser,
  Sister Carrie (1900) and
  An American Tragedy (1925)
• Joan M. Drury,
  Those Jordan Girls (1999)
• Edward Eggleston,
  The Hoosier School-Master (1871)
• Louise Erdrich,
  Love Medicine (1984),
  The Beet Queen (1986) and
  The Antelope Wife (1998)
• Loren D. Estleman,
  Jitterbug (1998)
• James T. Farrell,
  Studs Lonigan: A Trilogy (1935)
• Kenneth Fearing,
  The Big Clock (1946)
• F. Scott Fitzgerald,
  The Great Gatsby (1925)
• Abby Frucht,
  Life Before Death (1997)
• Iola Fuller,
  The Loon Feather (1940)
• William Gass,
  Omensetter's Luck (1966)
• Stephen Greenleaf,
  Fatal Obsession (1983)
• Jane Hamilton,
  A Map of the World (1994),
  The Short History of a Prince (1998) and
  Disobedience (2000)
• Lorraine Hansberry,
  A Raisin in the Sun (play) (1959)
• Jim Harrison,
  Dalva (1988) and
  The Woman Lit by Fireflies (1990)
• Jon Hassler,
  Staggerford (1977)
• David Haynes,
  Heathens (1996)
• Patricia Henley,
  Hummingbird House (1999) and
  In the River Sweet (2002)
• Josephine Herbst,
  Money for Love (1929)
• Tami Hoag,
  Dust to Dust (2000)
• Ellen Hunnicutt,
  Suite For Calliope: A Novel Of Music and the Circus (1987)
• Jon A. Jackson,
  The Blind Pig (1988)
• Garrison Keillor,
  Woebegone Boy (1997)
• W.P. Kinsella,
  The Iowa Baseball Confederacy (1986)
• Don Kurtz,
  South of the Big Four (1995)
• Lorna Landvik,
  Patty Jane's House of Curl (1995)
• Elmore Leonard,
  Swag (1976)
• Meridel LeSueur,
  Winter Prairie Woman (1990)
• Sinclair Lewis,
  Main Street (1920),
  Babbitt (1922) and i(1927)
• Ross Lockridge,
  Raintree County (1948)
• William Maxwell,
  Time Will Darken It (1948) and
  So Long, See You Tomorrow (1980)
• Terry McMillan,
  Mama (1987)
• Toni Morrison,
  Sula (1974),
  The Song of Solomon (1977) and
  Beloved (1987)
• Tim O'Brien,
  In the Lake of the Woods (1994)
• Stewart O'Nan,
  A Prayer Before Dying (1999)
• Sara Paretsky,
  Tunnel Vision (1984)
• Kenneth Patchen,
  The Journal of Albion Moonlight (1941)
• Marge Piercy,
  Braided Lives (1982)
• Darryl Pinckney,
  High Cotton (1992)
• J.F. Powers,
  Morte D'Urban (1962) and
  Wheat That Springeth Green (1975)
• Conrad Richter,
  The Trees (1940),
  The Fields (1946) and
  The Town (1950)
• Kenneth Rexroth,
  An Autobiographical Novel (1966)
• Marjorie Reynolds,
  The Starlite Drive-In (1997)
• Ntozake Shange,
  Betsey Brown (1985)
• Mona Simpson,
  Off Keck Road (2000)
• April Sinclair,
  Coffee Will Make You Black (1994)
• Upton Sinclair,
  The Jungle (1906)
• Jane Smiley,
  Ordinary Love and Good Will (1989) and
  A Thousand Acres (1991)
• Wallace Stegner,
  Remembering Laughter (1937)
• Gene Stratton-Porter,
  A Girl of the Limberlost (1909)
• Ruth Suckow,
  Country People (1924)
• Faith Sullivan,
  The Cape Ann (1988)
• Booth Tarkington,
  The Magnificent Ambersons (1918)
• Robert Travers,
  Anatomy of a Murder (1958)
• David Treuer,
  Little (1995)
• Mark Twain,
  The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885)
• Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.,
  God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965)
• Dan Wakefield,
  Going All the Way (1970)
• David Foster Wallace,
  Infinite Jest (1996)
• Jessamyn West,
  Friendly Persuasion (1940) and i(1975)
• Thornton Wilder,
  The Eighth Day (1967)
• Larry Woiwode,
  Indian Affairs (1992)
• Richard Wright,
  Native Son (1940)
• Ray A. Young Bear,
  Remnants of the First Earth (1997)

Nonfiction

• Sherwood Anderson,
  Puzzled America (1935)
• Clarence A. Andrews (editor),
  Growing Up in the Midwest (1981)
• Thomas Hart Benton,
  An Artist in America (rev. ed. 1983)
• Carol Bly,
  Letters from the Country (1981)
• Louis Bromfield,
  Pleasant Valley (1945) and
  Out of the Earth (1950)
• Erskine Caldwell,
  Afternoons in Mid-America: Observations and Impressions (1976)
• Theodore Dreiser,
  A Hoosier Holiday (1916)
• John Kent Folmar,
  This State of Wonders: The Letters of an Iowa Farm Family, 1858-1861 (1986)
• Emily Foster (editor),
  The Ohio Frontier: An Anthology of Early Writings (1996)
• Hamlin Garland,
  Son of the Middle Border (1917)
• Paul Gruchow,
  Grass Roots: The Universe of Home (1995)
• Patricia Hampl,
  Spillville (1987)
• William Dean Howells,
  A Boy's Town (1890) and
  Years of My Youth (1916)
• Harlan Hubbard,
  Shantyboat (1953) and
  Payne Hollow (1974)
• Sue Hubbell,
  A Country Year: Living with Questions (1986)
• Langston Hughes,
  I Wonder As I Wander: An Autobiographical Journey (1956)
• Caroline M. Kirkland (Mary Clavers),
  A New Home, Who'll Follow? (1839)
• David Kline,
  Great Possessions: An Amish Farmer's Journal (1990)
• Verlyn Klinkenborg,
  Making Hay (1986)
• Howard Kohn,
  The Last Farmer: An American Memoir (1988)
• Ring Lardner,
  The Story of a Wonder Man (1927)
• William Least Heat-Moon,
  Blue Highways: A Journey into America (1982)
• Aldo Leopold,
  A Sand County Almanac (1949)
• Meridel LeSueur,
  Ripening: Selected Work, 1927-1980 (1982)
• Michael Lesy,
  Wisconsin Death Trip (1973)
• Phillip Levine,
  The Bread of Time: Toward an Autobiography (1994)
• Michael Martone (editor),
  A Place of Sense: Essays in Search of the Midwest (1988) and
  Townships (1992)
• Michael Martone,
  The Flatness and Other Landscapes (2000)
• William Maxwell,
  Ancestors (1971)
• Susan Neville,
  Indiana Winter (1994) and
  Fabrication: Essays on making things and making meaning (2001)
• Sigurd Olson,
  The Singing Wilderness (1956) and
  The Lonely Land (1961)
• Cheri Register,
  Packinghouse Daughter (2000)
• Richard Rhodes,
  The Inland Ground: An Invocation of the American Middle West (1969) (Sydney L. Plum, ed.) (1996)
• Claire E. Swedborg (editor),
  Three Years with the 92nd Illinois: The Civil War Diaries of John M. King (1999)
• Studs Terkel,
  Division Street (1967) and
  Working (1974)
• James Thurber,
  My Life and Hard Times (1933)
• Mark Twain,
  Life on the Mississippi (1883)
• Richard Wright,
  Black Boy (1945)
• Ray A. Young Bear,
  Black Eagle Child: The Facepaint Narratives (1992)

Short pieces/short stories

• Sherwood Anderson,
  Winesburg, Ohio (1919) and
  The Egg and Other Stories (1992)
• Carol Bly,
  My Lord Bag of Rice (2000)
• Ray Bradbury,
  Dandelion Wine (1957) and
  Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962)
• Anthony Bukoski,
  Children of Strangers (1993) and
  Polonaise (1999)
• Sandra Cisneros,
  The House on Mango Street (1983)
• Susan Dodd,
  O Careless Love: Stories and a Novella (1999)
• Stuart Dybek,
  The Coast of Chicago (1990)
• F. Scott. Fitzgerald,
  The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald: A New Collection (1989)
• Hamlin Garland,
  Main-Traveled Roads (1891)
• William Gass,
  In the Heart of the Heart of the Country (1968)
• Joseph Geha,
  Through and Through: Toledo Stories (1990)
• James B. Hall,
  I Like It Better Now (1992)
• Ernest Hemingway,
  The Nick Adams Stories (1972)
• Jim Heynen,
  One-Room Schoolhouse: Stories About the Boys (1993)
• C. J. Hribal,
  The Clouds in Memphis (2000)
• Janet Kauffman,
  Places in the World a Woman Could Walk (1981) and
  Obscene Gestures for Women (1989)
• Garrison Keillor,
  Lake Woebegone Days (1985)
• Frederick Manfred, John Calvin Rezmerski (editor),
  The Frederick Manfred Reader (1996)
• Michael Martone,
  Fort Wayne Is Seventh on Hitler's List (1993)
• Jim Northrup,
  Walking the Rez Road (1993)
• Lon Otto,
  Cover Me (1988)
• Scott Russell Sanders,
  Wilderness Plots (1983)
• Jean Shepherd,
  Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories and Other Disasters (1971)
• Ruth Suckow,
  A Ruth Suckow Omnibus (1988)
• Will Weaver,
  A Gravestone Made of Wheat (1989)
• Glenway Wescott,
  Goodbye Wisconsin (1928)
• Michael Wilkerson and Deborah Galyan (editors),
  New Territory: Contemporary Indiana Fiction (1990)

Poems

• John Berryman, John Thornbury (editor),
  Collected Poems 1937-1971 (1989)
• Robert Bly,
  Silence in the Snowy Fields (1962)
• Marianne Boruch,
  A Stick That Breaks And Breaks (1997)
• Gwendolyn Brooks,
  Selected Poems (1963) and
  Report From Part Two (1996)
• David Citino,
  The Book of Appassionata: Collected Poems (1998)
• Amy Clampitt,
  The Collected Poems of Amy Clampitt (1997)
• Rita Dove,
  Selected Poems (1993)
• Paul Lawrence Dunbar,
  Lyrics of the Lowly Life (1896)
• Kenneth Fearing, Robert M. Ryley, editor,
  Complete Poems (1993)
• Gary Gildner,
  Blue Like the Heavens: New and Selected Poems (1984)
• Jim Harrison,
  The Shape of the Journey: New and Collected Poems (1998)
• Robert Hayden, Frederick Glaysher (editor),
  Collected Poems (1985)
• James Hearst, G. Scott Cawelti,
  The Complete Poetry of James Hearst (2001)
• Philip Levine,
  What Work Is (1991) and
  The Mercy (1999)
• Vachel Lindsay,
  General William Booth Enters into Heaven (1913)
• Edgar Lee Masters,
  Spoon River Anthology (1915)
• Haki R. Madhubuti,
  Groundwork: New and Selected Poems of Don L. Lee/Haki R. Madhubuti (1997)
• John G. Neihardt,
  Cycle of the West (1949)
• Dudley Randall (editor),
  The Black Poets (1971)
• Theodore Roethke,
  The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke (1966)
• Carl Sandburg,
  Chicago Poems (1916)
• Ntozake Shange,
  For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide . . . (1974)
• Mary Swander,
  Heaven-and-Earth House (1996)
• James Wright,
  Above the River: The Complete Poems (1990)