Richard Hugo Papers, 1942-1983

Richard Hugo was born in 1923 in Seattle, Washington. He was raised by his grandparents in White Center, Washington. He served in the Army Air Corps in World War II. After the war, he attended the University of Washington where he earned his B.A. in 1948 and his M.A in 1952 and was a student of Theodore Roethke. He worked as a technical writer for the Boeing Aircraft Company in Seattle. His first book of poetry, A Run of Jacks, was published in 1961; it was followed by another, Death of Kapowsin Tavern, in 1965. In 1963 he resigned his position at Boeing, and went with his wife Barbara Williams (whom he married in 1951) to Italy for a year. On returning to the United States, he was offered a position teaching creative writing at the University of Montana, where he would become head of that program. He also taught at the University of Washington and the University of Iowa. He published The Lady in Kicking Horse Reservoir (1973), What Thou Lovest Well Remains American (1975), 31 Letters and 13 Dreams (1977), White Center (1980) and The Right Madness on Skye (1980). After his divorce from Barbara Williams in 1965, he married Ripley Schamm in 1974. By the end of his life Hugo had accumulated many prizes and awards, including a Guggenheim fellowship, a Rockefeller Foundation creative writing grant, and the Theodore Roethke Memorial Prize. Richard Hugo died of leukemia in 1982.