Joan Chase

Joan Chase
Born	November 26, 1936 Wooster, Ohio
Died	April 17, 2018 Needham, Massachusetts
Occupation	Novelist
Language	English
Nationality	American
Education	University of Maryland
Genre	novels

Joan Lucille Chase (November 26, 1936 – April 17, 2018)^[1][2] was an American novelist.

Biography

Joan Strausbaugh was born in Wooster, Ohio in 1936; she and her family moved frequently due to her father's academic career.^[1] Joan graduated from the University of Maryland magna cum laude. From 1980 to 1984, she was an assistant director of the Ragdale Foundation. Chase also taught periodically at the Iowa Writers Workshop and Princeton University.^[2]

Literary career

Chase's first novel, During the Reign of the Queen of Persia was published in 1983 when she was 47 years old.^[3] She won the PEN/Hemingway Prize for First Fiction by an American author.^[4] The book was republished in 2014 by New York Review Books with an introduction by Meghan O'Rourke.

Personal life

In 1959, Strausbaugh married Richard Chase, an economist; they had two children together, a son and a daughter. Joan and Richard later divorced. She married Alexander Solomita in 2009.^[2]

Chase died on 17 April 2018 at a nursing home in Needham, Massachusetts, at the age of 81.^[1] She was suffering from both Parkinson's disease and Lewy Body disease.^[2]

Awards

• 1983, PEN/Hemingway Prize^[5]
• 1984, Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize
• 1987, Whiting Award^[6]
• 1990, Guggenheim Fellowship^[7][1]

Works

• During the Reign of the Queen of Persia. HarperCollins Publishers. 1983. ISBN 978-0-06-015136-2.
• The Evening Wolves. Ballantine Books. 1990. ISBN 978-0-345-36285-8.
• Bonneville Blue. Farrar, Straus, Giroux. 1991. ISBN 978-0-374-11539-5.

References

1. Marquard, Bryan. "Joan Chase, at 81; her first novel illuminated the lives of four girls on a rural farm". Boston Globe Obituaries. Boston Globe. Retrieved 26 April 2018.
2. Verongos, Helen T. (May 3, 2018). "Joan Chase, Who Drew Acclaim With First Novel at 46, Dies at 81". The New York Times. Retrieved Sep 11, 2020.
3. Weldon, Amy (13 November 2014). "Joan Chase: Our Childhood Edens and Lost Orchards of Memory". The Millions.
4. Diamond, Jason (Mar 28, 2014). "Book of the Week: 'During the Reign of the Queen of Persia' by Joan Chase". Retrieved 15 October 2014.
5. The World Almanac and Book of Facts 1985. New York: Newspaper Enterprise Association, Inc. 1984. p. 415. ISBN 0-911818-71-5.
6. "Joan Chase". www.whiting.org. Retrieved 2020-03-24.
7. "Joan L. Chase - John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation". www.gf.org. Archived from the original on 2011-06-04.

External links

• Donald J. Greiner (1993). "Joan Chase". Women without men: female bonding and the American novel of the 1980s. University of South Carolina Press. ISBN 978-0-87249-884-6.
• Whiting Foundation Profile