James Lee Burke is an American author, best known for his Dave Robicheaux series. He has won Edgar Awards for Black Cherry Blues and Cimarron Rose, and has also been presented with the Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America. The Robicheaux character has been portrayed twice on screen, first by Alec Baldwin and then Tommy Lee Jones. Wirt Williams, reviewing Burke's first novel, Half of Paradise, in the New York Times, compared his writing to Jean Paul Satre and Ernest Hemingway, but concluded "Mr. Burkes literary forebear is Thomas Hardy." Burke's 1982 novel, Two for Texas, was made into a 1998 TV movie of the same name. Burke has also written five miscellaneous crime novels, two short story collections, four books starring protagonist Texas attorney Billy Bob Holland, four books starring Billy Bob's cousin Texas sheriff Hackberry Holland, and two books starring Weldon Avery Holland, grandson of legendary Texas lawman Hackberry Holland.
Biography
Burke was born in Houston, Texas, but spent most of his childhood on the Texas-Louisiana Gulf Coast. He attended the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and University of Missouri, receiving a BA and MA in English Literature from the latter. He worked in a variety of jobs over the years while books he had written were rejected, and books he had published went out of print. At various times he worked as a truck driver for the U.S. Forest Service, as a newspaper reporter, as a social worker on Skid Row, Los Angeles, as a land surveyor in Colorado, in the Louisiana State unemployment system, and in the Job Corps in the Daniel Boone National Forest in Eastern Kentucky. He taught at five different colleges before getting on the tenure track teaching creative writing at Wichita State University during the 1980s.
Personal life
Burke and his wife, Pearl, own a home in Lolo, Montana. The couple have four children, including Alafair Burke, a law professor and best-selling crime writer.
1988: Burke was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Arts in Fiction. Burke received the 2002 Louisiana Writer Award for his enduring contribution to the "literary intellectual heritage of Louisiana." The award was presented by the then-Lieutenant-Governor of Louisiana, Kathleen Blanco, on November 2, 2002, at a ceremony held at the inaugural Louisiana Book Festival in Baton Rouge, LA.
Burke has been recognized three times by the Mystery Writers of America.
* 2009: Burke received the MWA's Grand Master Award. It is rare for a mystery novelist to win both an Edgar Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship.
