David Russell Wagoner (June 5, 1926 – December 18, 2021) was an American poet, novelist, and educator.
[1] Raised in Whiting, Indiana, from the age of seven, Wagoner attended Pennsylvania State University where he was a member of Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps and graduated in three years.
[6] One of his novels, The Escape Artist, was turned into a film by executive producer Francis Ford Coppola.
[7] Wagoner was Professor Emeritus at the University of Washington,[5] but after his retirement from full-time university teaching, Wagoner continued to lecture and teach in various workshop and low-residency writing programs, including the Hugo House and the MFA program of the Northwest Institute of Literary Arts on Whidbey Island.
"[3] David Wagoner's Collected Poems was nominated for the National Book Award in 1977 and he won the Pushcart Prize that same year.