Ron Hansen
Essayist
An American fiction writer and essayist, he is best known for such Western-themed novels as Desperadoes and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. The latter work was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award.
He earned an M.F.A. from the famed Iowa Writers' Workshop and subsequently attended Stanford University on a Wallace Stegner Fellowship.
He taught literature and creative writing at Santa Clara University.
He grew up in Omaha, Nebraska. He married fellow writer, Bo Caldwell.
His 1983 novel, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, was made into a movie starring Brad Pitt.