Todd Goddard

With me on this episode of Writers at Work is Todd Goddard, author of Devouring Time: Jim Harrison, A Writer's Life, the first biography of the protean American novelist, poet and screenwriter, Jim Harrison. Harrison's output indicates the magnitude of the task that confronted Todd, 21 novels and novellas, 20 volumes of poetry, essays, memoirs and other non-fiction works, and contributions to screenplays including the adaptation of his novella, Legends of the Fall. As Todd reveals, Harrison forged a unique, a uniquely American form of storytelling through his connection to the land, to spiritual matters, by a voracious appetite for reading that began in early childhood, and by friendships with many of his contemporaries in the arts. Perhaps fittingly, Harrison died at his writing desk, pen in hand, in 2016 at age 78. Todd Goddard earned his PhD in Literary Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and his JD at the University of Connecticut Law School. He is an associate professor of Literary Studies at Utah Valley University. In Devouring Time, the scholarship is obvious and deftly distributed, but what's most wonderful about it is how Todd brings Harrison to such vivid life. As Carl Hiaasen, who was a friend of Harrison said, "The biography is raw and revealing, yet with a sensitive eye for both the pain and the talent that made Jim one of modern America's most intriguing poets and novelists."