Eli Waldron

Eli Waldron
Eli Waldron, circa 1940s
Born	(1916-01-25)January 25, 1916 Oconto Falls, Wisconsin, United States
Died	June 9, 1980(1980-06-09) (aged 64)
Occupation	Writer, artist
Nationality	American
Genre	Fiction, poetry, non-fiction, journalism, drawing, humor, satire
Notable works	The Lonely Lady of Union Square (1955), A Carnival of Frogs (1953)
Notable awards	Participation Award, Simon & Schuster

Eli Waldron (January 25, 1916 to June 9, 1980) was born Gerald Cleveland Waldron in Oconto Falls, Wisconsin. Waldron was an American writer and journalist whose primary work consisted of short stories, essays, and poetry. His writings were published in literary journals (such as The Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, and Story) and popular periodicals (such as Collier's, Holiday, Rolling Stone, Saturday Evening Post). From the 1950s to 1970s he contributed stories and essays to The New Yorker, and in the 1960s and 1970s, a number of his poems and experimental fiction works appeared in underground, alternative, and "counter-culture" publications, such as The Illustrated Paper, Rat Subterranean News, Underground, The Village Voice, and .

Much of Waldron's fiction and non-fiction reveals a strong interest in the "underdog" and the marginalized, disenfranchised individual, as well as a belief in the possibility of triumph over (often seemingly great) adversity. Making repeated use of satire and often introducing surprise endings, Waldron consistently questioned what he perceived to be the status quo and championed those who may have been viewed as "outsiders" by people in authority or by members of society's "mainstream." This outlook and approach may be seen vividly in such fiction pieces as "The Beekeeper" (published in Prairie Schooner in 1943) and "Zawicki the Chicken" (Cross Section 1945: A Collection of New American Writing), as well as in such non-fiction portraits as "The Death of Hank Williams" (The Reporter, 1955) and "The Lonely Lady of Union Square" (The New Yorker, 1955).