Trivia

Winner of the 1979 National Book Award for "Going After Cacciato", Broadway Books, ISBN 0767904427.

Was once an intern for the Washington Post.

In 2013 was awarded the $100,000 Pritzker Military Library Literature Award.

His novel In the Lake of the Woods won the James Fenimore Cooper Prize for Best Historical Fiction.

Earned a BA in Political Science from Macalester College in 1968.

Was student body president while at Macalester College.

After he graduated college, he was drafted into the United States Army and was sent to Vietnam, where he served from 1969 to 1970 in 3rd Platoon, Company A, 5th Battalion, 46th Infantry Regiment. He served in the division that contained a unit involved in the infamous My Lai Massacre.

Teaches full-time every other year at Texas State University-San Marcos. In alternate years, he teaches several workshops to MFA students in the creative writing program.

In 2012 he received the Dayton Literary Peace Prize Foundation's Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award.

Was raised in Worthington, Minnesota.

Went to graduate school at Harvard University.