Ivan Doig (; June 27, 1939 – April 9, 2015) was an American author and novelist, widely known for his sixteen fiction and non-fiction books set mostly in his native Montana, celebrating the landscape and people of the post-war American West.

With settings ranging from the Rocky Mountain Front to Alaska's coast, Puget Sound and Oregon, the Chicago Tribune noted in 1987 that Doig wrote of "immigrant families, dedicated schoolteachers, miners, fur trappers, town builders" This House of Sky: Landscapes of a Western Mind, Doig's 1977 memoir, was finalist for the National Book Award for Contemporary Thought. In 2007 Doig won the University of Colorado's Center of the American West's Wallace Stegner Award. Doig's life and his works are the focus of the documentary film by Montana PBS and 4:08 productions, Ivan Doig: Landscapes of a Western Mind.

In 2006, Sven Birkerts described Doig as "a presiding figure in the literature of the American West."

Early life

Doig was born in White Sulphur Springs, Montana to Charles "Charlie" Doig, ranch hand and Berneta Ringer Doig. Doig moved with his father and grandmother on a series of jobs, the ranch equivalent of sharecropping, subsequently moving to Dupuyer, Montana to herd sheep close to the Rocky Mountain Front. As a child, Doig read comics, sports pages and magazines like Life, Colliers and The Saturday Evening Post. He won a full-tuition scholarship to Northwestern University, where he earned a bachelor's degree in 1961 and a master's degree in journalism in 1962. His master's thesis was on the subject of televised congressional hearings on organized crime. He later earned a Ph.D. in American history at the University of Washington, writing his dissertation on John J. McGilvra (1827–1903).

Important first-hand influences on his writing included his high school English and Latin teacher, Frances Tidyman; Sam Jamison, who taught him reporting at Northwestern; and Ben Baldwin, who taught him broadcast news.

He was related to Fully Informed Jury Association co-founder, Don Doig.

Career in writing

Before becoming a novelist, Doig wrote for newspapers and magazines as a free-lancer and worked for the United States Forest Service. Doig served as an editorial writer for the Lindsay-Schaub newspaper chain in Decatur, Illinois, while the two were students. They married on April 17, 1965. The two did not have any children. and was a longtime professor of journalism. He died from multiple myeloma on April 9, 2015. Montana State University was chosen over offers from Stanford University and the University of Washington based in part on the promise of the MSU Library to digitize the entire collection in less than one year, as well as on MSU's proximity to Doig's childhood home and the encouragement of Montana authors Rick Bass, Tom McGuane and Jamie Ford. The digital collection is available online.

This library includes a collaboration with Acoustic Atlas, Soundscapes of Ivan Doig, with recordings and interviews from the lands and peoples featured in his novels.

Works

Novels

  • The Sea Runners (1982)
  • English Creek (1984)
  • Dancing at the Rascal Fair (1987)
  • Ride with Me, Mariah Montana (1990)
  • Bucking the Sun (1996)
  • Mountain Time (1999)
  • Prairie Nocturne (2003)
  • The Whistling Season (2006)
  • The Eleventh Man (2008)
  • Work Song (2010)
  • The Bartender's Tale (2012)
  • Sweet Thunder (2013)
  • Last Bus to Wisdom (2015)

Nonfiction

  • News: A Consumer's Guide (1972) - a media textbook co-authored by Carol Doig
  • This House of Sky: Landscapes of a Western Mind (1978) - memoirs based on the author's life with his father and grandmother (nominated for the National Book Award)
  • Winter Brothers: A Season at the Edge of America (1980) - an essayistic dialog with James G. Swan
  • Heart Earth (1993) - memoirs based on his mother's letters to her brother Wally

Edited volumes

  • Streets We Have Come Down: Literature of the City (1975)
  • Utopian America: Dreams and Realities (1976)

Awards

  • Finalist, National Book Award, This House of Sky (1979)

References

  • Ivan Doig Archive at Montana State University
  • Ivandoig.com web archive at Archive-It
  • 1977 Early Forest Research Part 1
  • 1977 Early Forest Research Part 2
  • Long Interview with Ivan Doig on "The Whistling Season"
  • Short Interview with Ivan Doig on "The Whistling Season"