Michael shaara author biography worksheet

He graduated from Rutgers University, and it was during his college days that he knew his one goal was to become a writer. In the early s, Michael published a number of award-winning science-fiction short stories in the most popular pulp magazines of the day. He later began writing straight fiction and published more than 70 short stories in such magazines as Playboy, Redbook, Cosmopolitan, The Saturday Evening Post, and many others.

Two of his stories were produced as television dramas in the late s. Moving his wife Helen and young son Jeff to Florida in the mids, he began to teach English, literature, and creative writing at Florida State University in Tallahassee. Soon after, his daughter, Lila, was born.

MICHAEL SHAARA Pulitzer Prize—winning author of The Killer Angels FOR LOVE GAME or the "Moving, beautiful lf Hemingway had written a baseball novel, he might have written For Love .

Always a writer first and a teacher second, Michael continued to write short stories, but he always knew there was a larger work to be pursued. Throughout the early s he worked on his first novel, a deeply brooding story of a soldier who returns home from the Korean War and becomes a prizefighter. While critics admired the style and the content of the book, it was a commercial disappointment.

Though hit hard by the lack of public interest in The Broken Places, Michael's drive to write continued. Reflecting on an extraordinary experience with his family visiting the battlefield at Gettysburg, Michael became obsessed with telling the story of that momentous event through the eyes of the main characters themselves, something that had never been done before.

After seven years, the manuscript for The Killer Angels was completed.

Michael Shaara (June 23, – May 5, ) was an American author of science fiction, sports fiction, and historical fiction.

Teaching during the day, writing late into the night, and relying on a steady dose of cigarettes and coffee, Michael's lifestyle and his deep involvement with his story took a toll. In , he suffered a major heart attack at only 36 years of age. To Michael's disappointment, The Killer Angels were rejected by the first fifteen publishers who saw the manuscript.