Introduction
Timothy Egan (born November 8, 1954) is an American author, journalist and op-ed columnist for the New York Times, writing from a liberal perspective.
For The Worst Hard Time, a 2006 book about people who lived through The Great Depression's Dust Bowl, he won the National Book Award for Nonfiction and the Washington State Book Award in History/Biography.
In 2001, the New York Times won a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for a series to which Egan contributed, "How Race is Lived in America". He currently lives in Seattle. He is a weekly op-ed writer for the New York Times.
Egan has written seven books including his National Book Award winner The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl. His first, The Good Rain, won the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award in 1991.
The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America (2009) is about the Great Fire of 1910, which burned about three million acres (12,000 km²) and helped shape the United States Forest Service. The book details some of the political issues facing Theodore Roosevelt. For this work he won a second Washington State Book Award in History/Biography and a second Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award.
Awards and honors
- 2013 Chautauqua Prize, winner, Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher
- 2013 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction, winner, Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher