Ethan Canin | Author

Ethan Canin
Author, teacher, screenwriter, and co-founder of the San Francisco Writers' Grotto

Featured Works

View all»

Previous Pause Next

PUBLISHED: Jun.24.2008

America America: A Novel

From Ethan Canin, bestselling author of The Palace Thief, comes a stunning novel, set in a small town during the Nixon era and today, about America and family, politics and tragedy, and the impact of fate on a young man’s life. In the early 1970s, Corey Sifter, the son of working-class parents, becomes a yard boy on the grand estate of the powerful Metarey family. Soon, through the...

Buy now

Write a review

Learn more »

PUBLISHED: Sep.02.2002

Carry Me Across the Water

August Kleinman, the protagonist of Canin’s latest novel, is seventy-eight years old, rich and wise from a life filled with accomplishments and heartache. Yet as this spare, beautifully realized story opens, he is marveling at the fierce force he discovered in himself one afternoon when he was eighteen. That day, on his way to watch a friend from his Orthodox Jewish neighborhood in...

Buy now

Write a review

Learn more »

PUBLISHED: Aug.11.1998

For Kings and Planets

From the celebrated author of The Palace Thief and Emperor of the Air, comes this stunning novel about the relationship between two very different men. Orno Tarcher travels from a small town in Missouri to New York City to attend Columbia University, where he begins a new life feeling unsophisticated and insecure. He soon strikes up a friendship with Marshall Emerson, a seductive...

Buy now

Write a review

Learn more »

PUBLISHED: Jan.25.1994

The Palace Thief: Stories

The Palace Thief is the story of a dedicated and inspiring classics professor at an elite prep school where an encounter with a student, the son of a powerful senator, inexorably alters his life. Forty-one years later at a reunion of his students, he is faced with the fear that he may have failed the most important challenge of his life—to have been a great teacher.

Add to Bag

Write a review

Learn more »

PUBLISHED: Nov.01.1992

Blue River

From one of todays most highly acclaimed authors comes Blue River, a tale of love, violence, betrayal and possible reconciliation. When two distant and disparate brothers are brought together, they must confront the realities of their past to face the future.

Buy now

Write a review

Learn more »

PUBLISHED:

Emperor of the Air

Canin’s outstanding debut, winner of a Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship, gathers nine stories originally published in the Atlantic, Esquire and Ploughshares, among others; two were selected for the Best American Short Stories 1985 and 1986. At twenty-seven, the gifted author, a Harvard Medical School student who was a creative writing instructor and an Iowa Review editor,...

Add to Bag

Write a review

Learn more »

Ethan's Latest Blogs

View all»

Dec.03.2007 - 11:25 am

First Words Build a Hero

I started out with a single sentence. Which was, ‘He’d killed one man and possibly a second and had told Lyndon Johnson he was a coward after paying two thousand dollars to meet...

Comments from Ethan

Jan.11.2009 - 8:06 pm

In response to: First Words Build a Hero

Thanks, Bill

I appreciate your taking the time to leave a note. Best, Ethan

Dec.18.2008 - 3:21 pm

In response to: First Words Build a Hero

writing

Leanna, Much of writing is just showing up and seeing what happens. The trick is in showing up. Find the things that...

Dec.18.2008 - 3:13 pm

In response to: First Words Build a Hero

Thanks

Hey, thanks, Delirious Girl. Very glad you liked it. Sorry the review disappeared. Sorry about the lax checking, too....

Apr.30.2008 - 10:31 am

In response to: First Words Build a Hero

Judge Fogg

Hey, Randy,I haven't been checking my site much (ever, in fact) but just found your note. Congratulations! May the...

Published Reviews

View all»

Sep.10.1998

Published by The New York Times

In his novel, Mr. Canin illuminates both these realms, those of metaphor and literalness. Surprisingly in a world where tongues are eloquent, what the heart can grasp prevails....

About Ethan

Ethan Canin’s first short stories, collected in Emperor of the Air when he was twenty-seven, dazzled the literary world. His next five books, Blue River, For Kings and Planets, The Palace Thief, Carry Me Across the Water and America America established his...

Read full bio »

Causes Ethan Canin Supports

Partners In Health, www.PIH.org