Daniel Woodrell (1953-2025)

Just saw this obituary in the New York Times last night. The father of “country noir” has died at age 72. A shame, and a huge loss. Even most non-reading Americans would still remember Winter’s Bone (affiliate links here and elsewhere in this article), the movie based on Woodrell’s book of the same name that made Jennifer Lawrence a star.

Yes—that movie.

To writers, Woodrell was the star. How many writers in this life get to name their own genre? And yes, I know he would later come to despise the term.

I met him once at a book festival event in Nashville. Wealthy donors had ponied up to have dinner with a select group of authors attending the conference. Each table of donors got to have dinner with one of the writers. (I can’t believe rich people think this is special enough to pay for, but who am I to argue?) I was sitting at one of these tables because my wife was the guest author for that table, and management deigned to allow me to sit here too, even though I hadn’t made a sizable donation to the festival.

Daniel Woodrell was the author at a nearby table, and all night I kept waiting for a break in the action to go over and introduce myself. I knew his work. I loved his work. But of course I was too shy to go over and talk to him. That was problem No. 1. Problem No. 2 was the fact that the evening’s program was packed with boring speeches, and it looked like I would never have a chance.

Towards the end, the speeches petered out. The donors started leaving. Woodrell sat there alone, poking at his coffee and dessert. I went over and said hi. He invited me to sit. We chatted a while, and I loosened up.

One of the things I always want to ask writers is what they read as kids. His response was great, and strangely, it’s the only thing I remember from our chat:

“If it had a bottle of whiskey, a half-naked woman, or a gun on the cover, I read it.”

The only other thing I remember was him saying how, sometimes a project is too ambitious for the writer you are right now. But if you tuck it away and forget about it, someday you’ll be able to return to it and finish the job. It was like that for him with his book, The Maid’s Version.

Shortly after we spoke, I went back to our hotel and wrote up some notes, intending to share what I remembered of our chat in a blog post someday. But I never did, and I’ve since lost my notes, which is sad. But I’ll never forget the kindness he showed to a random writer who wanted to monopolize more of his time after the esteemed donors had fled.

If you haven’t investigated his work, you certainly should. (affiliate)