John Nichols (writer)

John Treadwell Nichols (born July 23, 1940, Berkeley, California) is an American novelist.

Biography

Nichols is the author of the "New Mexico trilogy", a series about the complex relationship between history, race and ethnicity, and land and water rights in the fictional Chamisaville County, New Mexico.^[1] The trilogy consists of The Milagro Beanfield War (which was adapted into a movie of the same title directed by Robert Redford), The Magic Journey, and The Nirvana Blues.

Two of his other novels have been made into films. The Wizard of Loneliness was published in 1966 and the film version with Lukas Haas was made in 1988. Another successful movie adaptation was of The Sterile Cuckoo, which was published in 1965 and was filmed by Alan J. Pakula in 1969.^[2] He also had an important but uncredited hand - due to a Writers Guild arbitration decision - in the Oscar-winning Best Adapted Screenplay for Costa-Gavras' 1982 film, Missing.

Nichols has also written non-fiction, including the trilogy If Mountains Die, The Last Beautiful Days of Autumn and On the Mesa. John Nichols has lived in Taos, New Mexico for many years. He is the subject of a documentary The Milagro Man: The Irrepressible Multicultural Life and Literary Times of John Nichols, which premiered at the 2012 Albuquerque Film Festival.^[3]

He is the grandson of ichthyologist John Treadwell Nichols and a first cousin of Massachusetts politician William Weld.^[4]

Nichols graduated from Hamilton College in 1962.

Bibliography

Novels

• The Sterile Cuckoo. David McKay Company, Inc. 1965. 
• The Wizard of Loneliness. Putnams. 1966. 
• New Mexico Trilogy
  • The Milagro Beanfield War. Holt, Rinehart and Winston. 1974. 
  • The Magic Journey. Holt, Rinehart, and Winston. 1978. ISBN 0030153565. 
  • The Nirvana Blues. Holt, Rinehart, and Winston. 1981. ISBN 0030592569. 
• A Ghost in the Music. Holt, Rinehart, and Winston. 1979. ISBN 003042576X. 
• American Blood. Henry Holt & Co. 1987. ISBN 0805003746. 
• An Elegy for September. Henry Holt & Co. 1992. ISBN 978-0805019940. 
• Conjugal Bliss: A Comedy of Martial Arts. Henry Holt & Co. 1994. ISBN 978-0805028034. 
• The Voice of the Butterfly. Chronicle Books. 2001. ISBN 978-0811832014. 
• The Empanada Brotherhood. Chronicle Books. 2007. ISBN 0811860523. 
• On Top Of Spoon Mountain. University of New Mexico Press. 2012. ISBN 978-0826352705. 

Non-fiction

• Non-fiction trilogy
  • If Mountains Die: A New Mexico Memoir. With William Davis (photographer). Knopf. 1979. ISBN 0394424808. 
  • The Last Beautiful Days of Autumn. Henry Holt & Co. 1982. ISBN 0030592542. 
  • On the Mesa. Gibbs Smith. 1986. ISBN 0879052201. 
• A Fragile Beauty: John Nichols' Milagro Country. Gibbs Smith. 1987. ISBN 0879052821. 
• Keep It Simple: A Defense of the Earth. Norton. 1992. ISBN 0393033864. 
• Dancing on the Stones:Selected Essays. University of New Mexico Press. 2000. ISBN 978-0826321824. 
• An American Child Supreme: The Education of a Liberation Ecologist. Credo Series. Milkweed Editions. 2001. ISBN 978-1571312525. 

References

External links

• Official website
• Inventory of the John Nichols Papers, 1957–2008, University of New Mexico, University Libraries, Center for Southwest Research
• John Nichols, Writing the Southwest, University of New Mexico
• Works by or about John Nichols in libraries (WorldCat catalog)