Jonathan Evison biography

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Jonathan Evison
Photo: Algonquin Books

Jonathan Evison

Jonathan Evison Biography

Jonathan Evison is the author of the novels All About Lulu, West of Here, The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving, This Is Your Life, Harriet Chance!, Lawn Boy, and Legends of the North Cascades. He lives with his wife and family in Washington State.



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Interview

The Great American Landscaping Novel: An essay by Jonathan Evison about Lawn Boy

Before I became a bestselling writer, I was perpetually broke. For me being broke was not only an enduring condition, it was my legacy. For generations the beleaguered Evison tribe had been all kinds of broke: hopelessly, urgently, even willfully. I can honestly say that young Johnny Evison never expected to be anything but broke. That I decided to become a writer in third grade ought to be proof enough.

The fact is, I'd always sort of resented money. When you grow up broke, you don't learn much about money except that there's usually not enough of it. Nobody teaches you how to attract money, or leverage it, or even save it. And capitalism is not exactly teeming with possibilities for those individuals who lack capital. Basically, you're just left with the ism.

In 1976, four years after my sister died in a freak accident and our family life began its not-so-gradual unraveling, my old man managed himself a work transfer from Sunnyvale, California, to Keyport, Washington, moving us eight hundred miles north to the relatively affluent community of Bainbridge Island, whereupon he promptly managed himself a transfer back to Santa Clara, effecting his escape from domestic life, and leaving my mom a broke single...

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Books by this Author

Books by Jonathan Evison at BookBrowse
Small World jacket Lawn Boy jacket This Is Your Life, Harriet Chance! jacket The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving jacket
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All the books below are recommended as readalikes for Jonathan Evison but some maybe more relevant to you than others depending on which books by the author you have read and enjoyed. So look for the suggested read-alikes by title linked on the right.
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