Before writing two novels with some seriously dark prose—and getting the thumbs up from Oprah, The
Washington Post and every medium in between—Jon Clinch
spent a lifetime as an ad writer. In his visit to Writers@WRUV on Dec. 2, 2010, he tells how his ad life led into his novelist life, and so much more. And—oh, yes—he reads some good work: from his novel Kings of the Earth.
Listen to this extended interview here.
Read an excerpt from his personal draft of Kings of the Earth here.
The Bio!
Born and raised in the remote heart of upstate New York, Clinch been an English teacher, a metalworker, a folksinger, an illustrator, a typeface designer, a housepainter, a copywriter and an advertising executive. Teaching and advertising took

Author Jon Clinch
him south to the suburbs of Philadelphia for many years, and only with the publication of Finn, his first novel, was he able to return to the kind of rural surroundings he’d loved from the start: This time, in the Green Mountains of Vermont. He is married to the novelist Wendy Clinch, and they have one daughter.
Finn (read The Washington Post review here) tells the secret history of Huckleberry Finn’s father. The book was named an American Library Association Notable Book and was chosen as one of the year’s ten best books by The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, The Christian Science Monitor. It also won the Philadelphia Athenaeum Literary Award and was shortlisted for the Sargent First Novel Prize.
His second novel, Kings of the Earth, led the 2010 Summer Reading List at O, The Oprah Magazine. Set in upstate New York, Kings of the Earth is a powerful story of life, death, and family in rural America.
He invites you to visit his website, his blog and his Facebook page. Oh, and you should follow him on Twitter, too!
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