Paul West papers

Paul West was born in Eckington, Derbyshire, England on Febrary 23, 1930. West attended Oxford and Columbia Universities, and would later teach English literature and Comparative Literature at the Memorial University of Newfoundland and The Pennsylvania State University. In 1993 West married Diane Ackerman, also a writer and poet, and they settled in Ithaca, New York. West was a prolific writer known mostly as a novelist. His first published novel was A Quality of Mercy in 1961.

West’s writing bridged a number of genres and demonstrated his desire to experiment with character, setting, and theme. Many of his essays and short criticisms discussed the influence that Samuel Beckett and Lord Byron had over his works, as well as the influence that his personal interest in science, astronomy, and flight had in some of his short stories and nonfiction works. West’s writing had been the subject of both criticism and praise; winning him many awards over the course of his professional writing career. West was awarded three Pushcart Prizes (1987, 1991, and in 2003), a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Lannan Prize for Fiction (1993), the American Academy of Arts and Letters Literature Award (1985), and multiple other prizes and accolades.

In 2003, West suffered a stroke that left the language areas of his brain damaged. The resulting rehabilitation prompted Ackerman’s writing of One Hundred Names for Love: A Stroke, a Marriage and the Language of Healing a book about the joys and hardships that came with re-teaching her husband how to speak and write. The stroke also left West with a condition called Aphasia, which affected his short-term memory. Learning to cope with this condition as well as re-learning how to speak and write prompted West to write The Shadow Factory.