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Elmore Leonard
Life Time
11 October 1925 - 20 August 2013
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I decided to try my hand at literature at the age of eleven, under the influence of a passage from the novel by Erich M. Remarque “On the Western Front without change” read in the newspaper. He studied at the University of Detroit, served in the Navy during the Second World War, took part in combat operations in the Pacific Ocean. In 1950 he graduated from the university with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy. He worked in an advertising agency, in 1951 he published his first story “The Trail of
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I decided to try my hand at literature at the age of eleven, under the influence of a passage from the novel by Erich M. Remarque “On the Western Front without change” read in the newspaper. He studied at the University of Detroit, served in the Navy during the Second World War, took part in combat operations in the Pacific Ocean. In 1950 he graduated from the university with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy.
He worked in an advertising agency, in 1951 he published his first story “The Trail of the Apaches” in the journal “Argosi”. He released several more stories and novellas in the Western genre, and in 1953 he published the novel “Bounty Hunters”. One of Leonard's novels of these years, "Hombre", was named by critics among the 25 best American Western novels.
In 1961 he resigned from the agency, wrote scripts for educational films and articles for Encyclopaedia Britannica, in 1966 he sold the film script based on his novel Hombre Studio Fox. In 1970-1980 he moved away from westerns and switched to novels from modern life. Wide popularity came to him with the release of the novel “Glitz” (1985), which instantly became a bestseller; the subsequent novels became bestsellers – “Gandits”, “Napofol”, “Point of Roma”, “Pronto”, etc.
Leonard's works were nominated for the Edgar A. Poe Prize; in 1983 he became the winner of this award for the novel "La Brava". In 1991, he received the International Association of Criminal Writers Award for the novel Bob Maximum, and a year later the Guild of Detective Authors of America awarded him the title of Grandmaster.
He lives with his family in Michigan.