Haven Kimmel
Encyclopedia
Biography
Haven Kimmel was born in New CastleNew Castle, Indiana
As of the census of 2000, there were 17,780 people, 7,462 households, and 4,805 families residing in the city. The population density was 2,987.5 people per square mile . There were 8,042 housing units at an average density of 1,351.3 per square mile...
, Indiana
Indiana
Indiana is a US state, admitted to the United States as the 19th on December 11, 1816. It is located in the Midwestern United States and Great Lakes Region. With 6,483,802 residents, the state is ranked 15th in population and 16th in population density. Indiana is ranked 38th in land area and is...
, and was raised in Mooreland
Mooreland, Indiana
Mooreland is a town in Blue River Township, Henry County, Indiana, United States. The population was 375 at the 2010 census.-Geography:Mooreland is located at ....
, Indiana, the focus of her bestselling memoir, A Girl Named Zippy: Growing up Small in Mooreland, Indiana (2001).
Kimmel earned her undergraduate degree in English and creative writing from Ball State University
Ball State University
Ball State University is a state-run research university located in Muncie, Indiana. It is also known as Ball State or simply BSU.Located on the northwest side of the city, Ball State's campus spans and includes 106 buildings...
in Muncie
Muncie, Indiana
Muncie is a city in Center Township, Delaware County in east central Indiana, best known as the home of Ball State University and the birthplace of the Ball Corporation. It is the principal city of the Muncie, Indiana, Metropolitan Statistical Area, which has a population of 118,769...
, Indiana and a graduate degree from North Carolina State University
North Carolina State University
North Carolina State University at Raleigh is a public, coeducational, extensive research university located in Raleigh, North Carolina, United States. Commonly known as NC State, the university is part of the University of North Carolina system and is a land, sea, and space grant institution...
, where she studied with novelist Lee Smith
Lee Smith (author)
Lee Smith is an American fiction author who typically incorporates much of her home roots in the Southeastern United States in her works of literature. She has received many writing awards, such as the O. Henry Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Fiction, and the North...
. She also attended seminary
Seminary
A seminary, theological college, or divinity school is an institution of secondary or post-secondary education for educating students in theology, generally to prepare them for ordination as clergy or for other ministry...
at the Earlham School of Religion
Earlham School of Religion
Earlham School of Religion , a graduate division of Earlham College, located in Richmond, Indiana, is the oldest graduate seminary associated with the Religious Society of Friends . ESR was founded in 1960 by Wilmer Cooper, D. Elton Trueblood and others for the training of Quaker ministers...
in Richmond
Richmond, Indiana
Richmond is a city largely within Wayne Township, Wayne County, in east central Indiana, United States, which borders Ohio. The city also includes the Richmond Municipal Airport, which is in Boston Township and separated from the rest of the city...
, Indiana. She lives in Durham
Durham, North Carolina
Durham is a city in the U.S. state of North Carolina. It is the county seat of Durham County and also extends into Wake County. It is the fifth-largest city in the state, and the 85th-largest in the United States by population, with 228,330 residents as of the 2010 United States census...
, North Carolina
North Carolina
North Carolina is a state located in the southeastern United States. The state borders South Carolina and Georgia to the south, Tennessee to the west and Virginia to the north. North Carolina contains 100 counties. Its capital is Raleigh, and its largest city is Charlotte...
.
Haven Kimmel was a poet prior to writing a memoir of her early childhood. The Solace of Leaving Early (2002) and Something Rising (Light and Swift) (2004) are the first two novels in Kimmel's "trilogy of place" about fictional Hopwood County, Indiana. The third book, released in September 2007, is titled The Used World. Her other works include a second memoir, She Got Up Off the Couch (2005), a poetic children's book, Orville: A Dog Story (2003), and a retelling of the Book of Revelation
Book of Revelation
The Book of Revelation is the final book of the New Testament. The title came into usage from the first word of the book in Koine Greek: apokalupsis, meaning "unveiling" or "revelation"...
in Killing the Buddha: A Heretic's Bible (2004), edited by Peter Manseau and Jeff Sharlet
Jeff Sharlet
Jeff Sharlet is an American journalist, bestselling author, and academic best known for writing about religious subcultures in the United States. He is a contributing editor for Harper's and Rolling Stone...
(ISBN 0-7432-3276-3).
Works
- 2001 A Girl Named Zippy: Growing up Small in Mooreland, Indiana, memoir (ISBN 0-385-49982-5)
- 2002 The Solace of Leaving Early, novel (ISBN 0-385-49983-3)
- 2003 Orville: A Dog Story, children’s book (ISBN 0-618-15955-X)
- 2004 Something Rising (Light and Swift), novel (ISBN 0-7432-4775-2)
- 2005 She Got Up Off the Couch, and Other Heroic Acts from Mooreland, Indiana, memoir (ISBN 0-7432-8499-2)
- 2007 The Used World, novel (ISBN 0-7432-4778-7)
- 2008 Kaline Klattermaster's Tree House , children’s book (ISBN 978-0-689-87402-4)
- 2008 Iodine, novel (ISBN 978-1-416-57284-8)
Quotes
- The distance between Mooreland in 1965 and a city like San Francisco in 1965 is roughly equivalent to the distance starlight must travel before we look up casually from a cornfield and see it. (From A Girl Named Zippy, p. 2.)
- Possibility, infinity, beauty—none of those words were right. [...] What he really wanted to say was: have you felt this? this phantom life streaking like a phosphorescent hound at the edges of your ruin? (From The Solace of Leaving Early, p. 40.)
- Orville barked and barked against his chain. And right in the middle of a long summer day, when he had barked about how he was really a good dog in a bad mood, and how he missed that one-eyed doll, and how there was something so terrible about the feeling of a chain against a neck, everything changed, because a girl with cotton-candy hair moved into the little house across the road and Orville fell in love. (From Orville: A Dog Story, p. 18.)
- "It's marriage, family, home, sentimentality, continuity, these are the lies that eat women like a machine." [...] "A Woman-Chipper, can you imagine how that would sell? Everyone, anywhere on the political spectrum, would want one." (From Something Rising (Light and Swift), p. 126.)
- "She had done all these things and she was going to graduate summa cum laude, which meant Good But Loud, from the Honors College, and she had done it all in twenty-three months. It takes some people more time to hang a curtain." She Got Up Off the Couch, p. 189.)
- "Once she had been thought dear, a treasure, the little red-haired HolinessHoliness movementThe holiness movement refers to a set of beliefs and practices emerging from the Methodist Christian church in the mid 19th century. The movement is distinguished by its emphasis on John Wesley's doctrine of "Christian perfection" - the belief that it is possible to live free of voluntary sin - and...
girl whose laughter sparkled like light on a lake; now she stood outside the gates of her father's Prophecy, asleep inside his house. Her hair tumbled across her pillow and over the edge of the bed: a flame. [...] It was mid-December in Jonah, Indiana, a place where Fate can be decided by the weather, and a storm was gathering overhead." (From The Used World, pp. 2–3.)
- "Do Not Walk On Grass!" (From Kaline Klattermaster's Tree House, p. 1.)
- She drifted; fell into the horizon dream, which was sometimes a comfort and sometimes disconcerting. That's all the dream was: an endless horizon, everywhere she turned, no ground beneath her feet, no sky above. A line where two concepts either met or parted ways. No sun rose, no moon. The HoraeHoraeIn Greek mythology the Horae or Hours were the goddesses of the seasons and the natural portions of time. They were originally the personifications of nature in its different seasonal aspects, but in later times they were regarded as goddessess of order in general and natural justice...
were the seasons and their names signified time (heure): Lachesis, experience, or the accident in destiny. Clotho the inborn disposition. And Atropos, the ineluctable, Death Herself. Ianthe dreamed warm, the horizon did not alter, she thought of Weeds, and of the dark freezing house down the lane that no one could see. Colt never entered her mind. (From Iodine, p 150.)