John Casey Biography

American novelist, shortstory writer, and critic, born in Worcester, Massachusetts, educated at Harvard University and the University of Iowa. Casey moved to Charlottesville, Virginia in 1972 and became a teacher at the University of Virginia. His first novel, An American Romance (1977), was a critical success, but it was his second novel, Spartina (1989), the story of Dick Pierce, an embittered Rhode Island fisherman, that established his literary reputation. In Spartina, as in his earlier fiction, Casey's depiction of his hero is both realistic and human. He uses Dick's internal voice to convey the inner struggles that accompany his exterior predicaments: his struggle to attain the money to finish his boat, his involvement with a drug-runner, and his extra-marital affair, among others.