Larry Heinemann

Larry Heinemann
Born	1944 (age 72–73) Chicago
Occupation	Novelist, memoirist
Nationality	American
Period	1977-
Genre	war
Subject	Vietnam War
Notable awards	National Book Award 1987

Larry Heinemann (born 1944) is an American novelist born and raised in Chicago. His published work—three novels and a memoir—is primarily concerned with the Vietnam War.

Heinemann served a combat tour as a conscripted draftee in Viet Nam from 1967 to 1968 with the 25th Infantry Division, and has described himself as the most ordinary of soldiers.

He received a B.A. from Columbia College, Chicago in 1971, taught creative writing there for fifteen years, and meanwhile wrote his own first and second novels. In 1986 he resigned over a furious argument about nepotism and academic freedom.Paco's Story was published later that year.

Since then Heinemann has received literature fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, and a Fulbright Scholarship to research Vietnamese folklore, legends, and mythology at Huế University. He has also taught on the faculty of the University of Southern California in the Masters of Professional Writing Program. He lives and works in Texas.

Heinemann's prose style is blunt and straightforward, reflecting his working-class background. He drew most directly on his Vietnam experience in his first novel Close Quarters which was published in 1977.

His second and critically most acclaimed novel is Paco's Story, which won the 1987 U.S. National Book Award for Fiction in a major surprise that has remained controversial. Other critics and essayists thought the award appropriate and well deserved. At the time, Heinemann's only comment on the controversy was that the check for $10,000 was already cashed and the Louise Nevelson sculpture was not likely to be returned.

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