John Clendennin Talbot Burne Hawkes, Jr. (August 17, 1925 – May 15, 1998) was a postmodern American novelist, known for the intensity of his work, which suspended some traditional constraints of narrative fiction.
[1][2] Born in Stamford, Connecticut, Hawkes was educated at Harvard College, where fellow students included John Ashbery, Frank O'Hara, and Robert Creeley.
Hawkes took inspiration from Vladimir Nabokov and considered himself a follower of the Russian-American translingual author.
Nabokov's story "Signs and Symbols" was on the reading list for Hawkes' writing students at Brown University.
[6] Among his students at Harvard and Brown were Rick Moody, Jeffrey Eugenides, David Shields,[7] Christine Lehner Hewitt, Jade D Benson/Denice Joan Deitch, Alex Londres, William Melvin Kelley,[8] Marilynne Robinson,[9] Ross McElwee,[10] and Maxim D.