The Youngest Boy: Stories

Jim Heynen grew up on an Iowa farm in one of the last areas in the state to get electricity. He attended a one-room schoolhouse and graduated from eighth grade at age 12 before going on to college and then graduate school at the University of Iowa and again at the University of Oregon.’p He is best known for his short-short stories The Man Who Kept Cigars in His Cap, Graywolf Press; You Know What is Right; North Point Press The One-room Schoolhouse, Knopf; The Boys’ House; Minnesota Historical Society Press and Ordinary Sins, Milkweed Editions). Minnesota astronaut George Pinky Nelson took a recording of Heynen’s stories for bedtime listening on his last space mission. Heynen has also published three novels (The Fall of Alice K) Milkweed Editions’ Cosmos Coyote and William the Nice YA, Henry Holt’ Being Youngest YA, Henry Holt), as well as several collections of poetry, including A Suitable Church Copper Canyon Press and Standing Naked: New and Selected Poems Confluence Press. He wrote prose vignettes for two photography books published by The University of Iowa Press, Harker&’rsquo’s Barns and Sunday Afternoon on the Porch.’ His one major nonfiction book, One Hundred Over 100 Fulcrum Publishers, featured 100 American centenarians. For many years he was writer in residence at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. He has been awarded National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships in both poetry and fiction. He lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

Illustrator and children’s author Tom Pohr grew up in the automobile-manufacturing town of Flint, Michigan. A self-taught artist whose love of animals is evident in his artwork, Pohrt has been interested in writing and drawing ever since he was a little boy. Despite his lack of guidance as a youngster, Pohrt has become a well-established illustrator, working with texts by authors such as Philippa Pierce, Julia Durango, Barry Lopez, Jim Heynen, Wendell Berry, and Jim Harrison as well as penning the text for two self-illustrated books featuring his original stories.’p’The precise, delicate lines of his drawings, coupled with his slightly moody, sepia-toned palette, suggest antique etchings, wrote a Publishers Weekly contributor in reviewing Pohrt’’s work for Howard Norman’’s’Trickster and the Fainting Birds the critic dubbing the picture book’beautifully designed and presented.In’Coyote Goes Walking’’Pohrt retells four Native-American trickster tales, bringing his animal characters to life in what a Publishers Weekly contributor described as’warm, earth-toned watercolorsthat contain a’subtle humor.Described by a Publishers Weekly contributor as’one off-beat destination that’’s definitely worth a visit, Pohrt’’s quirky picture book Having a Wonderful Time finds a girl and a talking cat on a vacation where unexpected animal-sightings abound. The reviewer had special praise for the author Ilustrator’’sconfidently deadpantext with its’dry, understated humor, but also commended the author’’s characteristic detailed pen-and-ink drawings.