Harry Crews

Crews was born in Bacon County, Georgia, in 1935 and served in the Marines during the Korean War. He attended the University of Florida on the GI Bill, but dropped out to travel. Eventually returning to the university, Crews finally graduated and moved his wife, Sally, and son, Patrick Scott, to Jacksonville where he taught English at Lakeshore Junior High School for a year.

Crews returned to Gainesville and the university to work on his master's in English Education. It was during this period that he and Sally divorced for the first time. Crews continued his studies, graduated, and – denied entrance into UF's Creative Writing program – took a teaching position at Broward Community College in the subject of English. It was here in south Florida that Crews convinced Sally to return to him, and they were remarried. A second son, Byron, was born to them in 1963. Crews returned to University of Florida in 1968 not as a student, but as a member of the faculty in Creative Writing. Crews formerly taught in the creative writing program at the University of Florida. In 1964, Patrick Scott drowned in a neighbor's pool. This proved to be too heavy a burden on the family, and Crews and Sally were once again divorced.

Crews' first published novel, The Gospel Singer, appeared in 1968. His novels include: A Feast of Snakes, The Hawk Is Dying, Body, Scar Lover, The Knockout Artist, Karate Is a Thing of the Spirit, All We Need of Hell, The Mulching of America, Car, and Celebration. Crews published a memoir in 1978 titled A Childhood: The Biography of a Place. Crews wrote essays for Esquire, Playboy, and Fame. He had a column in Esquire called "Grits" for fourteen months in the 1970s, where he covered such topics as cockfighting and dog fighting. Crews had a tattoo on his right arm which said: "How do you like your blue eyed boy Mr. Death" (from the poem Buffalo Bill's by E. E. Cummings) beneath a skull.

The University of Georgia acquired Harry Crews's papers in August 2006. The archive includes manuscripts and typescripts of his fiction, correspondence, and notes made by Crews while on assignment. Guides to his collections are available at http://hmfa.libs.uga.edu/hmfa/search?keyword=&title=&creator=crews&year=&year-max=&smode=advanced.

Crews died March 28, 2012, from complications of neuropathy.

• Crews scripted the original draft of 1985 thriller The New Kids, but was not pleased with the finished film; his name does not appear in the credits, which attribute the story and screenplay to Stephen Gyllenhaal and Brian Taggert.
• Kim Gordon (of Sonic Youth), Lydia Lunch and Sadie Mae named their band Harry Crews after him. They released one album, Naked in Garden Hills, in 1989.
• Canadian pop band Men Without Hats has a song called "Harry Crews" on their 1991 album Sideways.
• "Scarlover" is the first track on Maria McKee's 1996 album Life Is Sweet. She thanks Crews in her acknowledgements.
• Colorado band Drag the River has a song called "Mr. Crews" on their 2006 album It's Crazy.
• Crews was the subject of the first installment of the Rough South documentary series written and directed by Gary Hawkins. The film, entitled The Rough South of Harry Crews, won a regional Emmy Award and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting's Gold Award in 1992.
• In the documentary, Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus (2004), Crews tells his grisly homespun Southern stories while walking down a rural dirt track.
• Crews played a brief role in Sean Penn's The Indian Runner and dedicated his book Scar Lover to Penn.
• In 2007, another documentary was released: Harry Crews – Survival Is Triumph Enough. The personal format is loosely based on an interview with artist and filmmaker Tyler Turkle, and the themes explored include hardship, tragedy and loss throughout the Crews' life.
• Kansas City band Season to Risk wrote and recorded a song on their eponymous first album in 1993, entitled "Snakes", which is inspired by the Crews novel A Feast of Snakes.
• Florida Trend magazine released an interview with Harry Crews posthumously in April 2012. The interview is in Crews' own words, with quotes such as, "I've never begun a novel that I knew how it ended. I just start and try to find out what it is I think about whatever it is I am writing about." Another quote: "Listen, if you want to write about all sweetness and light and that stuff, go get a job at Hallmark."