Conrad Richter
| Conrad Richter | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born |
Conrad Michael Richter October 13, 1890 Tremont, Pennsylvania, U.S. |
| Died | October 30, 1968 (aged 78) Pottsville, Pennsylvania, U.S. |
| Cause of death | Heart attack |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | Novelist |
| Years active | 1924–1968 |
| Known for | The Sea of Grass, The Light in the Forest, The Town, The Awakening Land |
| Spouse(s) | Harvena Maria Achenbach (died in 1972) |
| Children | Harvena Richter (died in 2011) |
Conrad Michael Richter (October 13, 1890 – October 30, 1968) was an American novelist whose lyrical work is concerned largely with life on the American frontier in various periods. His novel The Town (1950), the last story of his trilogy The Awakening Land about the Ohio frontier, won the 1951 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. His novel The Waters of Kronos won the 1961 National Book Award for Fiction. Two collections of short stories were published posthumously during the 20th century, and several of his novels have been reissued during the 21st century by academic presses.
Conrad Michael Richter was born in 1890 in Tremont, Pennsylvania, near Pottsville, to John Absalom Richter, a Lutheran minister, and Charlotte Esther (née Henry) Richter. His grandfather, uncle and great-uncle were also Lutheran ministers, and descended from German colonial immigrants. As a child, Richter lived with his family in several small central Pennsylvania mining towns, where he encountered descendants of pioneers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries who shared family stories. These inspired him later to write historical fiction set on changing American frontiers. Attending local public schools, Richter finished his formal education when he graduated at age fifteen from high school.
At the age of 19, Richter started working as an editor of a local weekly newspaper, the Patton, Pennsylvania Courier. In 1911 Richter relocated to Cleveland, Ohio and worked as the private secretary to a wealthy manufacturing family. Richter married Harvena Maria Achenbach in 1915. They had their only child, Harvena Richter, in 1917. Richter worked subsequently for a small publishing company, initiated a juvenile magazine, and started writing short stories. During the 1930s, he also performed two brief stints as a screenwriter for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios in Hollywood, California.
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