Brian J. Doyle

Catholicism has long played an important part in Brian Doyle’s life and work. He was raised in an Irish Catholic family in New York and earned his degree in English from the University of Notre Dame in 1978. He was the assistant editor at U.S. Catholic magazine and was a senior writer for Boston College magazine before he became the editor of the University’s Portland magazine in 1991. During his tenure, Portland has consistently been ranked among the best university magazines in the country and, in 2005, won Newsweek’s Sibley Award as the top university magazine in America. Doyle has also authored many books of fiction, essays, and poems, including his novels Mink River, The Plover, Chicago, and Martin Marten, for which he won a 2016 Oregon Book Award for Young Adult Literature. His essays have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, Orion, The American Scholar, and The New York Times, to name a few, and have been reprinted in the annual anthologies from Best American Essays, Best American Science & Nature Writing, and Best American Spiritual Writing. Other honors include the Catholic Book Award, three Pushcart Prizes, the John Burroughs Medal for distinguished nature writing in 2017 and for Outstanding Published Nature Essay in 2012, and the Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2008.