Gerald Haslam


Gerald William Haslam was an author focused on rural and small towns in California's Great Central Valley including its poor and working-class people of all colors. A native of Oildale, California, Haslam has received numerous literary awards.

Early life and education

Haslam was born in Bakersfield, California in 1937. The son of an oil worker, he grew up in nearby Oildale where Merle Haggard was a neighbor. He attended Garces Memorial High School before working as a farm field hand, a store clerk and an oil field roustabout and roughneck. He served in the U.S. Army from 1958 through 1960. He attended Bakersfield College 1955–57, 1960–61, then married Janice Eileen Pettichord in 1961. He later attended San Francisco State University, where he earned a B.A. in 1963 and an M.A. in 1965. Haslam also attended, and gave great credit to, Washington State University, 1965 and 1966. He completed a Ph.D. from The Union Graduate School, in 1980. He played college football, ran track and boxed in the Golden Gloves.

Career

Haslam was a professor of English at Sonoma State University from 1967 to 1997. After becoming a professor emeritus, he occasionally taught for the Oscher Lifelong Learning program. He taught part time at the Fromm Institute for Lifelong Learning at the University of San Francisco from 2001 to 2015.
Concurrent with his teaching at SSU, Haslam published numerous articles and stories in national and regional magazines. He was a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle's Sunday magazine and was a Contributing Writer for the Los Angeles Times Sunday magazine, and continued to be an op-ed contributor to the Sacramento Bee. Haslam also served as a commentator for KQED-FM's "The California Report." His writing is widely anthologized.

Personal life

Haslam's wife, Janice Eileen Haslam, has edited all his books and co-authored three of them. They resided in Penngrove, California. They are the parents of Fred Haslam, lead developer of Sim City 2000; of "Anomalies" website developer Garth Haslam; and of magazine editor Alexandra Russell, who has been her father's partner on two books. His other two children—research biologist Simone Haslam Sawyer and Carlos Haslam, a vivarium manager -— are not involved in writing or publishing. He was also survived by 14 grandchildren.
According to Russell, Haslam died of prostate cancer at Petaluma Valley Hospital in Petaluma on April 13, 2021, aged 84, which was confirmed by an article in The Press Democrat. Haslam wrote his own obituary, which was discovered shortly after his death.

Literary awards

  • 2016 Eric Hoffer Legacy Fiction Award for Grace Period
  • 2016 Eric Hoffer Culture Award, Honorable Mention, for Leon Patterson: A California Story
  • 2013 Award of Merit for In Thought and Action
  • 2013 S. I. Hayakawa Book Prize for In Thought and Action
  • 2006 Josephine Miles Award for Haslam's Valley
  • 2005 Delbert and Edith Wylder Award
  • 2004 Certificate of Commendation
  • 2001 Western States Book Award for Straight White Male
  • 2001 Silver Medal for Straight White Male
  • 2001 Carey McWilliams Award
  • 2001 Certificate of Commendation for Workin' Man Blues
  • 2000 Ralph J. Gleason Award for Workin' Man Blues
  • 1999 Distinguished Achievement Award
  • 1994 Commonwealth Club Silver Medal for The Great Central Valley: California's Heartland
  • 1994 Award of Merit for The Great Central Valley: California's Heartland
  • 1994 Bay Area Book Reviewers' Award for The Great Central Valley: California's Heartland
  • 1993 Benjamin Franklin Award for Many Californias: Literature from the Golden State
  • 1990 Josephine Miles Award for That Constant Coyote
  • 1989 Creative Writing Fellowship
  • 1988 Honorable Mention, SPUR Short Fiction Award for "The Estero"
  • 1985 Bernard Ashton Raborg Award for "William Saroyan and the Critics"
  • 1983 Special Mention, Pushcart Prize
  • 1971 Honorable Mention, Joseph Henry Jackson Award
  • 1969 Arizona Quarterly Award

    Works

Fiction

  • Okies: Selected Stories
  • Masks: A Novel
  • The Wages of Sin: Collected Stories
  • Hawk Flights: Visions of the West
  • Snapshots: Glimpses of the Other California
  • The Man Who Cultivated Fire
  • That Constant Coyote: California Stories
  • Condor Dreams & Other Fictions
  • The Great Tejon Club Jubilee
  • Manuel and the Madman
  • Straight White Male
  • Haslam's Valley
  • ''Grace Period''

    Non-Fiction

  • The Language of the Oil Fields
  • Voices of a Place: Social and Literary Essays from the Other California
  • Coming of Age in California
  • The Other California
  • The Great Central Valley: California's Heartland
  • Workin' Man Blues: Country Music in California
  • In Thought and Action: The Enigmatic Life of S. I. Hayakawa
  • ''Leon Patterson: A California Story''

    Anthologies edited

  • Forgotten Pages of American Literature
  • Western Writing
  • California Heartland: Writing from the Great Central Valley
  • Literary History of the American West
  • Many Californias: Literature from the Golden State
  • Where Coyotes Howl and Wind Blows Free: Growing Up in the West
  • ''Jack London's Golden State: Selected California Writings''

    Booklets and Monographs

  • William Eastlake
  • Afro-American Oral Literature
  • Jack Schaefer
  • Voices of a Place: The Great Central Valley
  • Lawrence Clark Powell
  • Out of the Slush Pile
  • The Horned Toad
  • An Instructor's Guide to Where Coyotes Howl and Wind Blows Free
  • ''Gerald Haslam in Conversation with Jonah Raskin''