A. B. Guthrie Jr.

Alfred Bertram "Bud" Guthrie Jr. (January 13, 1901 – April 26, 1991) was an American novelist, screenwriter, historian, and literary historian known for writing western stories. His novel The Way West won the 1950 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and his screenplay for Shane was nominated for an Academy Award.

Biography Guthrie was born in 1901 in Bedford, Indiana. When he was six months old he relocated with his parents to Montana, where his father became the first principal of the Teton County Free High School in Choteau. His father was a graduate of Indiana University, his mother from Earlham College at Richmond, Indiana. :3

In 1919, Guthrie studied at the University of Washington for a semester, then transferred to the University of Montana, where he was a member of Phi Sigma Kappa fraternity and graduated with a degree in journalism with honors in 1923. He worked odd jobs for the next few years. Guthrie published his first novel Murders at Moon Dance in 1943.

In 1944, while still at the Leader, Guthrie won the Nieman Fellowship from Harvard, and spent the year at the university studying writing.

During his year at Harvard Guthrie began his novel The Big Sky, which was published in 1947. He quit teaching in 1952 to devote his full-time to writing,

Guthrie continued to write predominantly western subjects. He worked for a time in Hollywood, writing the screenplays for Shane (1953, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award) and The Kentuckian (1955).

Non-fiction The Blue Hen's Chick (1965), an autobiography Big Sky, Fair Land: The Environmental Essays of A. B. Guthrie Jr., edited by David Peterson (1988) A Field Guide to Writing Fiction (1991)

Children's books The Big Sky: An Edition For Young Readers (1950) Once Upon a Pond (1973)

Poetry Four Miles from Ear Mountain (1987)

Screenplays Shane (1953) The Kentuckian (1955)

Spoken word A. B. Guthrie Jr., reads from THE BIG SKY (Caedmon, 1974)