[1] He received a Stegner Fellowship in Stanford University's non-degree creative writing program for the 1962–1963 academic year.
During his time at Stanford—where he was also known by his hippie moniker "Captain Kentucky"—McClanahan became good friends with fellow program alumni Ken Kesey (through their mutual friendships with Wendell Berry), Gurney Norman, and Robert Stone.
His memoir, Famous People I Have Known, humorously recollects many of his Prankster experiences, and Tom Wolfe's bestseller, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, gave it worldwide notoriety.
He credited NKU and the sequence of events with giving him the opportunity to finish the long-gestating The Natural Man, which was completely rewritten from first to third person.
[1] McClanahan was a writer since the mid-1950s with short stories, essays, and reviews in such magazines as Esquire, Playboy, and Rolling Stone.
Along with contemporary authors Wendell Berry, James Baker Hall, Bobbie Ann Mason and fellow Prankster Gurney Norman, McClanahan was considered a member of the "Fab Five" group of Kentucky writers.