C.E. Poverman

Charles Everit Poverman (born November 8, 1944, New Haven, Connecticut) is an American fiction writer.

C.E. Poverman
Born (1944-11-08) November 8, 1944
New Haven, CT
OccupationWriter, Teacher
GenreFiction
Notable worksThe Black Velvet Girl, Susan, Solomon's Daughter, My Father in Dreams, Skin, On the Edge, Love by Drowning

Poverman is the son of A. David Poverman, a surgeon and Helen Goldberg Poverman. He had an older sister, Judith, who died in 1995.[1]

On Labor Day 1955, at age eleven, Poverman contracted polio during the last major epidemic before Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine was released. He was the only child in the ward who neither died nor was permanently paralyzed.[1] Poverman cites this incident as a watershed in his own life and in his understanding of family dynamics.[1]

Poverman attended Hopkins Grammar School, a private school in New Haven, where he swam competitively and graduated in 1962. Poverman then entered Yale and studied writing under Robert Penn Warren. He was a Senior Scholar of the House and president of his senior society, Elihu. He graduated with “High Honors with Exceptional Distinction” in 1966.[1]

Following graduation, Poverman went to India on a Fulbright teaching fellowship. After nine months of teaching and a short stint as a famine relief worker in India, he lived briefly in Thailand before returning to the United States. In 1969, he earned an M.F.A. with honors from the University of Iowa Writing Program.

His first collection of stories, The Black Velvet Girl, won the Iowa School of Letters Short Fiction Award in 1976. Competition judge Donald Barthelme wrote: “Poverman takes us to new places, new cities of the imagination. He is adept, surprising, sometimes harsh, and frequently very funny—a real discovery.[2]

In 1977, he took a position at the University of Arizona at Tucson and published his first novel, Susan, with Viking. In 1980, he published his second novel, Solomon's Daughter, also with Viking. That same year he married the photographer Linda Fry. Their son, Dana, was born in 1983 and their daughter, Marisa, in 1987. In 1986, he published his third novel My Father in Dreams.

Poverman’s second story collection, Skin was published in 1992. In the Winter 1992 issue of The Georgia Review, Greg Johnson wrote that Skin “powerfully dramatizes the stress and confusion of people who try, quixotically and sometimes nobly, to get inside the skin of another person,[3] while a review from PBS Books & Company stated "the stories all hit the mark with their depictions of characters who are devious, gullible, confused, quirky and even insane, but never unreal."[4]

In August 2013, Poverman published his seventh book, Love by Drowning. A starred review in Library Journal called it "an acutely intelligent psychological thriller that will keep readers as off-balance as his protagonist."[5]

In 2019, Poverman's most recent novel, Love by Drowning, was made into a movie with Dow Jazz Films. Poverman wrote the adapted screenplay for the movie.

Works
  • The Black Velvet Girl (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1976)
  • Susan (New York; Viking, 1977)
  • Solomon’s Daughter (New York: Viking, 1981)
  • My Father in Dreams (New York: Scribners, 1988)
  • Skin: Stories (Princeton: Ontario Review Press, 1992)
  • On the Edge (Princeton: Ontario Review Press, 1997)
  • Love by Drowning (Berkeley, California: El León Literary Arts, 2013).

Awards
  • 1976, Iowa Short Fiction Award: The Black Velvet Girl [6]
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References
  1. Dictionary of Literary Biography ,by Victoria Nelson (2001, Vol.234 -third series) (Page 1-2)
  2. at The Black Velvet Girl; by Iowa School of Letters Short Fiction Award; published 1976; retrieved July 1, 2013
  3. "Good Men, Bad Times", by Greg Johnson; in The Georgia Review (winter 1992) (page 786-793)
  4. "Books & Co. - C.E. Poverman". KAET. Eight, Arizona PBS. June 5, 1993. Archived from the original on 5 September 2014. Retrieved 4 September 2014.
  5. Review of Love by Drowning Archived 2013-12-26 at the Wayback Machine, at Library Journal; by Michael Pucci; published August 30, 2013; retrieved September 1, 2013
  6. ""The Black Velvet Girl" by C. E. Poverman". University of Iowa Press. Retrieved 4 September 2014.
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