A short life of the author
Chris Offutt (b. 24 August 1958) was born in Haldeman, Kentucky, a former mining community in the eastern Kentucky hills. He left Kentucky as a young man and lived in various places before eventually returning. He teaches at the University of Mississippi.
Life and Career
Kentucky Straight (1992) — his debut story collection — is a masterwork of Appalachian fiction: stories about the people of the eastern Kentucky hills told in prose of remarkable compression and exactitude. The collection was widely praised and established Offutt as a major new voice in American short fiction.
The Good Brother (1997) is a novel about a man who kills his brother’s murderer and flees Kentucky for Montana. Out of the Woods (1999) is a second story collection of equal quality to the first.
After a long silence, Offutt returned with The Killing Hills (2021) — a crime novel set in the Kentucky hills — and Shifty’s Boys (2022), a sequel.
Major Works and Themes
Offutt writes about rural Appalachia — about poverty, family loyalty, violence, and the pull of home — with an honesty and lack of condescension that is rare. His characters are poor, often uneducated, and live in a landscape of extraordinary beauty and economic devastation. He never romanticises or patronises them.
Key Works
- Kentucky Straight (1992)
- Out of the Woods (1999)
- The Killing Hills (2021)
Collecting Offutt
Kentucky Straight (1992, Vintage Contemporaries) — the debut, a paperback original — brings $20–$60 in fine condition. Offutt’s books have small print runs.