WGBH-TV, channel 2, is a non-commercial educational public television station located in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. WGBH-TV is a member station of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), and produces more than two-thirds of PBS's national prime time television programming. Programs produced for PBS include Masterpiece, NOVA, Frontline, American Experience, The Victory Garden and This Old House. WGBH is also well known for having co-produced numerous period dramas and has collaborated for years with British production companies.

The WGBH Educational Foundation, the parent organization, also owns and operates WGBX-TV (channel 44) and the public radio stations WGBH (FM) and WCRB in the Boston area, and WCAI (and satellites WZAI and WNAN) in Cape Cod. Another sister station is WGBY-TV (channel 57), the PBS member station in Springfield, Massachusetts.

WGBH is also considered a leader in accessible media services for people who are deaf, hard-of-hearing, blind, or visually impaired. WGBH invented television closed captioning, audio description (Descriptive Video Service), and created the Rear Window Captioning System for films they provide these access services to commercial and public TV producers, and to home video, Web sites, and movie theaters nationwide.

History[link]

For more of a history of the Lowell Institute Cooperative Broadcasting Council see the article on John Lowell, Jr.

WGBH Educational Foundation received its first broadcasting license (for radio) in 1951 under the auspices of the Lowell Institute Cooperative Broadcasting Council, a consortium of local universities and cultural institutions, whose collaboration stems from an 1836 bequest by textile manufacturer John Lowell, Jr. calling for free public lectures for the citizens of Boston.

WGBH Radio Boston signed on at 89.7 MHz FM on October 6, 1951, with a live broadcast of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

The original construction permit for Channel 2 in Boston went to Raytheon, an electronics company based in neighboring Waltham, Massachusetts, who would have launched a commercial television station under the call letters WRTB-TV (for Raytheon Television Broadcasting). WRTB never made it on the air, opening the way for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to allocate Channel 2 for noncommercial purposes and for WGBH to receive a license to operate on that channel.

WGBH Guest Street studios (with "digital mural" LED screen)

WGBH-TV Channel 2 went on the air on May 2, 1955, at 5:20 p.m. with studios located at 84 Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge. When a fire ^[1] destroyed the studios in the early morning hours of October 14, 1961, WGBH-TV Channel 2 and WGBH 89.7 FM broadcast from the studios of other broadcasting stations until they were able to build new studios located at 125 Western Avenue in Allston, and begin operations there on August 29, 1963. WGBH moved to a new studio complex on Guest Street in Boston in June 2007.

WGBH was New England's first non-commercial television station and a pioneer in what is now known as public television. Many programs seen on National Educational Television and later, the Public Broadcasting Service, originated at the facilities of WGBH or were otherwise produced by the station.

Today WGBH is known around the U.S. as PBS's primary station due to its great production for PBS prime time television programming and PBS Kids programming.

Transmission facilities[link]

"GBH" stands for Great Blue Hill, the location of WGBH's FM transmitter, as well as the original location of WGBH-TV's transmitter. Great Blue Hill in Milton, Massachusetts, has an elevation of 635 feet (193 m) and is the highest point in the Boston area. Today, WGBH-TV's and WGBX-TV's transmitters are located at the CBS digital television facility in Needham, Massachusetts, where channel 44 first transmitted on September 25, 1967; channel 2 moved there on June 18, 1966. WGBX-TV's digital service on channel 43 shares the master antenna at the very top of the tower with the commercial stations. Analog channel 44 has a separate antenna lower down that is shared with WGBH-DT on channel 19.

WGBH operates a Shaw Broadcast Services satellite uplink facility which provides Boston broadcast television stations to Canadian cable and satellite TV distributors. As a Canadian company, Shaw is not legally entitled to operate an uplink facility in the United States. Hence, it pays WGBH to perform this service on its behalf. This facility is also located at the CBS (WBZ-TV) tower in Needham.

Studios[link]

Guest Street entrance to the WGBH studios

WGBH's original studios were located at 84 Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge, Massachusetts (presently Stratton Student Center) on the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology until the building burned down in a 1961 fire. Three years later, after being based in temporary offices and using the studios of Boston's commercial television stations to produce local programming, the station moved to 125 Western Avenue in the Allston neighborhood of Boston. The ZIP code of the station and its post-office box—PO Box 350, Boston, MA 02134—gained notice in a recurring jingle on its 1970s and late 1990s children's program, ZOOM.

As WGBH's operations grew, the 125 Western Avenue building proved inadequate; some administrative operations were moved across the street to 114 Western Avenue, with an overhead pedestrian bridge connecting the two buildings. By 2005, WGBH had facilities in more than a dozen buildings in the Allston area.^[2] The station's need for more studio space dovetailed with Harvard Business School's desire to expand its adjacent campus; Harvard already owned the land on which the WGBH studios were located. WGBH built a new studio complex, designed by James Polshek & Partners, in nearby Brighton, spanning the block of Market Street from Guest Street to North Beacon Street, with radio studios facing pedestrian traffic on Market Street. The postal address and lobby entrance of the new studio building is 1 Guest Street; it was inaugurated in June 2007. The outside of the building carries a 30 by 45 feet (14 m) "digital mural" LED screen, displaying a different image each day to commuters on the passing Massachusetts Turnpike.^[3] Television shows and radio programs continued to shoot at the Western Avenue studios until migration to the new facility reached completion in September 2007. The old Western Avenue studios are currently empty^[4] except for a substation of the Harvard University police department which moved in June 2008.

Callsign history[link]

WGBH's original transmitter was located on Great Blue Hill in Milton, Massachusetts (thus the choice of WGBH as a callsign) and the FM radio transmitter is still there. In the late 1960s, WGBH planned a second TV station for Boston, and four other TV stations across Massachusetts. As a result, all of WGBH's TV stations have the WGB* call letters; channel 44 in Boston (launched in 1967) has WGBX, while channel 57 in Springfield, Massachusetts (launched in 1971) has WGBY. There were to have been three additional WGBH-owned stations, including a WGBW in Adams, Massachusetts on channel 35 (its W was to stand for West; the callsign has since been reassigned to a radio station in Two Rivers, Wisconsin), and stations in New Bedford and Worcester. Only WGBX and WGBY actually made it on the air.

WGBH's callsign is occasionally jokingly expanded as "God Bless Harvard", although the station's connections with the university are at best indirect. (Harvard was one of several Boston-area universities which took part in the Lowell Institute Cooperative Broadcasting Council, and provided land on Western Avenue in Allston for the station's studios.)

Channels and digital services[link]

WGBH-TV[link]

This is the main television service of WGBH, as it is the television station first licensed by the Foundation. It broadcasts mixed programming during the week with children's programs during the day and documentary and entertainment material at night; Saturday programming focuses heavily on cooking and home improvement how-to shows.

WGBX-TV[link]

Similar to WQED-TV in Pittsburgh, WGBH operates a secondary station, WGBX-TV. The current tagline for this station is "independent, original, 'GBX 44". WGBX-TV focuses on program genres not covered by WGBH-TV. Reruns of the previous night's programming either from WGBH-TV or from WGBX-TV itself also makes up a part of the station's programming. WGBX's digital channel provides several digital side channels that rerun programming from both WGBH and from other PBS stations around the country.

• WGBX-TV 44/DT 43 Boston

WGBY-TV[link]

WGBH also owns and manages WGBY, the PBS affiliate in the Springfield, Massachusetts market; it however has its own branding and logo and is run separately from the Boston operation. Its digital channel carries similar programming to WGBX.

Other TV services[link]

WGBH is one of six local Boston TV stations seen in Canada on the Bell TV satellite provider.

At one point, WGBH operated a Hyannis translator on channel 8 that had the W08CH call sign, which later ceased operations. It was deleted by the FCC in 2004.^[5]

WGBH Online[link]

The internet is WGBH's "third platform" - All radio and television programs have web components that are available at wgbh.org. There are also "web-only" productions:

• WGBH Forum Network Free web public lecture videos and podcasts in partnership with Boston's leading cultural and educational organizations
• WGBH Podcasts - wgbh.org/podcasts
• WGBH Media Library and Archives - openvault.wgbh.org

Digital television[link]

The station's digital channel is multiplexed. Formerly WGBH HD showed a separate slate of programming from the analog channel to showcase PBS's high definition content; however, in 2008 it switched to a high-definition simulcast of the analog channel, with standard-definition programming presented in windowbox or letterbox format.

Channel 2.2 480i was WGBH-SD, a non-high-definition version of 2.1 1080i WGBH-HD. In about April 2012 channel 2.2 started broadcasting PBS World instead, a copy of 44.2.

WGBH now exclusively broadcasts a digital signal on UHF channel 19, retaining its Channel 2 branding and mapping on digital tuners as virtual channel 2 via PSIP technology. After the June 12, 2009 transition to digital TV mandated by the FCC, WGBH's analog signal broadcast nightlight service information at a lower power before permanently ceasing transmission. Eventually the channel 2 frequency (54-60 megahertz) will be available for other uses.

In early 2010, the station became the first mobile DTV provider in the Boston area. It transmits two free-to-air channels using the ATSC-M/H standard, at 2.75 Mbit/s, with its first subchannel labelled as "WGBH CH 2".^[6][7][8]

Major WGBH television productions[link]

• Africans in America (1998–1999) PBS
• All About You
• America's Ballroom Challenge
• American Experience (1988–present PBS)
• Andre's Mother
• Antiques Roadshow (U.S.) (1997–2012) PBS
• Antiques Roadshow FYI
• Arthur (1996–present PBS with Cookie Jar Entertainment Inc.)
• Basic Black (formerly Say Brother)
• Camera Three
• Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy (2002) PBS
• Coyote Waits Granada Television PBS
• Curious George (with Imagine Entertainment and Universal Animation Studios)
• Culture Shock (2000) PBS
• Between the Lions (with Sirius Thinking Ltd. and Mississippi Public Broadcasting)
• Design Squad (with PBS Kids GO!)
• Destinos: An Introduction to Spanish
• Discover: The World of Science
• Discovering Psychology
• Don't Look Now! (1983, a short-lived spinoff clone of the Canadian TV show You Can't Do That On Television)
• Endgame: Ethics and Values in America (2002) Scott Goldstein Productions PBS
• Evening at Pops (1970–2005) Boston Symphony Orchestra PBS
• Evening Compass
• Evolution (2001) Clear Blue Sky Productions, Inc. PBS
• FETCH! with Ruff Ruffman
• Shaun the Sheep (with Aardman Animations)
• Timmy Time (with Aardman Animations)
• Gaspard and Lisa (with Georg Hallensleben and Chorion)
• French in Action
• The French Chef
• Frontline
• Frontline/World
• The Fool of the World and the Flying Ship
• Greater Boston, a public affairs program on issues of local interest, airing weeknights on WGBH Channel 2 and repeated later on WGBH Channel 44, hosted by Emily Rooney
• Gourmet Magazine's Diary of a Foodie
• High School Quiz Show
• La Plaza
• Lidia's Italy (from 2009)
• Long Ago & Far Away
• Last Chance Garage
• Martha Speaks (as of September 1, 2008, co-produced by Studio B Productions)
• MIT Science Reporter
• Masterpiece (formerly known as Masterpiece Theatre) (1971–present PBS
• Mill Times (2002) Public Broadcasting Service
• Misunderstood Minds (2002) PBS
• NOVA (1974–present PBS)
• NOVA scienceNOW
• Old Settler (2001–2004) PBS
• Peep and the Big Wide World
• People's Century (1995) PBS
• Postcards from Buster (2004-2008) (with Marc Brown Studios and Cinar) PBS
• Rebop
• The Reporters
• Right Here, Right Now (2000) American Documentaries Inc. ITVS PBS
• A Science Odyssey (1997-1998) PBS
• Skinwalkers PBS
• Simply Ming
• Conspiracy of Kindness (2005) PBS
• The Ten O'Clock News
• The Wubbulous World of Dr. Seuss (1998) Disney Channel
• This Old House (1979–present PBS)
• Ask This Old House
• The New Yankee Workshop
• They Made America (2004) PBS
• Time Warp Trio (the only WGBH-produced show that does not air on PBS)
• The Question of God (2001) (co-production with Walden Media) PBS
• The Victory Garden (1975–2010) PBS
• War and Peace in the Nuclear Age
• The Wizard of Oz (1958, now produced by DiC Entertainment)
• The Western Tradition
• Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego (in partnership with WQED in Pittsburgh)
• Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego (in partnership with WQED in Pittsburgh)
• WayBack (1998–2004) PBS
• WOOF! (1998–2002) PBS
• ZOOM (1999–2006) PBS

Online[link]

• FFFBI
• Teachers' Domain
• WGBH Forum Network
• The WGBH Lab
• Engineer Your Life

Podcasting[link]

• Morning Stories Public radio's first podcast directed and produced by Tony Kahn for WGBH 89.7 and WGBH.org.

Notable people who have appeared regularly in WGBH productions[link]

• Julia Child, "The French Chef"
• James Underwood Crockett, "The Victory Garden"
• Bob Vila, "This Old House"
• Alistair Cooke, "Masterpiece Theatre"
• Russell Baker, "Masterpiece Theatre"
• Will Lyman, "Frontline"
• Gene Shalit, "Mystery!"
• Vincent Price, "Mystery!"
• Diana Rigg, "Mystery!"
• Robert Krulwich, "NOVA ScienceNOW"
• Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, "NOVA ScienceNOW"
• Christopher Lydon, "The Ten O'Clock News"
• Michael Kolowich, "The Ten O'Clock News"
• Steve Curwood, "The Ten O'Clock News"
• Meg Vaillancourt, "The Ten O'Clock News"
• Emily Rooney, Greater Boston
• Thomas J. MacDonald, Rough Cut - Woodworking with Tommy Mac

WGBH alum maintain a website where stories and photographs can be shared. Occasional reunions are held, including ones in 2000 and 2006.

Footnotes[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: WGBH Guest Street studios

• WGBH website
• WGBH Alumni
• WGBH Forum Network
• Query the FCC's TV station database for WGBH
• BIAfn's Media Web Database -- Information on WGBH-TV
• WGBH-TV signoff, March 1, 1991
• WGBH Open Vault

American Masters is a PBS television show which produces biographies on the artists, actors and writers of the United States who have left a profound impact on the nation's popular culture. It is produced by WNET in New York City. The show debuted on PBS in 1986.^[1]

Groups or organizations featured include: Actor's Studio, Algonquin Round Table, Group Theatre, Sweet Honey in the Rock, Women of Tin Pan Alley, Negro Ensemble Company, Juilliard School, the Beat Generation, The Singer-songwriters of the 1970s, Sun Records, Vaudeville, and Warner Bros. Pictures.

History[link]

American Masters, a series "devoted to America's 'greatest native-born and adopted' artists," was originally scheduled to premier in September 1985; for "logistical scheduling reasons" the premiere was delayed until summer 1986, though on October 16, 1985, an American Masters "special" called Aaron Copland: A Self-Portrait was aired.^[2]

The first of the 15 first-season episodes was Private Conversations,^[3] a "cinema-verite documentary by Christian Blackwood done in that trickiest of cinematic forms: a film about a film, in this instance the television version of Death of a Salesman, directed by Volker Schlöndorff".^[4] It aired on June 23, 1986, as one of two episodes not specifically commissioned for the show's first season.^[4]

Susan Lacy, American Masters creator and executive producer, selected each subject, matched them to the specific film makers, and oversaw a first-season budget of $8 million.^[4] Before creating the series Lacy had been the senior programmer for Great Performances and one of the "architects" of American Playhouse, having written the original proposal for the latter. At the time of the show's premiere, she was also the East Coast head of the Sundance Institute.^[4]

After the show's first two seasons, American Masters began producing most of its episodes; in those cases, it hires directors, arranges for funding, manages the budget, and supervises the editing; the show reserves the right to make the final cut on every film it produces.^[5] The American Masters production company occasionally plays a more limited role and co-produces some of its episodes, such as the 2005 documentary on Bob Dylan, No Direction Home, and then in 2010 The Doors, When You're Strange.

Subjects[link]

This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.

A[link]

• Actor's Studio
• Stella Adler
• Louisa May Alcott
• Algonquin Round Table
• Woody Allen
• Atlantic Records
• Louis Armstrong
• John James Audubon
• Richard Avedon

B[link]

• Joan Baez
• George Balanchine
• James Baldwin
• Lucille Ball
• Tony Bennett
• Leonard Bernstein
• Jeff Bridges
• James Brown
• Carol Burnett

C[link]

• John Cage
• Alexander Calder
• Cab Calloway
• Robert Capa
• Truman Capote
• Johnny Carson
• John Cassavetes
• Willa Cather
• Lon Chaney
• Charlie Chaplin
• Ray Charles
• Julia Child
• Harold Clurman
• Nat King Cole
• Sam Cooke
• Aaron Copland
• Walter Cronkite
• George Cukor
• Merce Cunningham
• Edward S. Curtis

D[link]

• James Dean
• Placido Domingo
• The Doors (When You're Strange)
• Bob Dylan (No Direction Home)

E[link]

• Thomas Eakins
• Charles and Ray Eames
• Clint Eastwood
• Albert Einstein
• Duke Ellington
• Ralph Ellison

F[link]

• Ella Fitzgerald
• F. Scott Fitzgerald
• John Ford/John Wayne
• Miloš Forman
• Aretha Franklin
• Buckminster Fuller

G[link]

• Judy Garland
• Marvin Gaye
• Frank Gehry
• George Gershwin
• Allen Ginsberg
• Lillian Gish
• Philip Glass
• Samuel Goldwyn
• Benny Goodman
• Glenn Gould
• Martha Graham
• Cary Grant
• D.W. Griffith
• Woody Guthrie
• Group Theatre

H[link]

• Merle Haggard
• Dashiell Hammett
• John H. Hammond
• Helen Hayes
• Lillian Hellman
• Ernest Hemingway
• Jerry Herman
• Don Hewitt
• Al Hirschfeld
• Alfred Hitchcock/David O. Selznick
• Hollywood Chinese
• David Hockney
• Billie Holiday
• Lena Horne
• Zora Neale Hurston

I[link]

This section is empty. You can help by adding to it.

J[link]

• Jasper Johns
• Philip Johnson
• Bill T. Jones
• Quincy Jones
• Juilliard School

K[link]

• Danny Kaye
• Elia Kazan
• Buster Keaton
• Garrison Keillor
• Gene Kelly
• André Kertész

L[link]

• Harper Lee
• Annie Leibovitz
• John Lennon
• James Levine
• Harold Lloyd
• Cachao Lopez
• George Lucas
• Henry Luce

M[link]

• Norman Mailer
• Bob Marley
• Sanford Meisner
• Yehudi Menuhin
• Arthur Miller
• Joni Mitchell
• Margaret Mitchell
• Marilyn Monroe
• Robert Motherwell
• John Muir
• Edward R. Murrow

N[link]

• Negro Ensemble Company
• Willie Nelson
• Bob Newhart
• Mike Nichols/Elaine May
• Alwin Nikolais/Murray Louis
• Isamu Noguchi

O[link]

• Phil Ochs
• Georgia O'Keeffe
• Eugene O'Neill

P[link]

• Jack Paar
• Charlie Parker
• Les Paul
• Pearl Jam (Pearl Jam Twenty)
• Gregory Peck
• I.M. Pei
• Edgar Allan Poe
• Sidney Poitier
• Cole Porter
• Katherine Anne Porter

Q[link]

This section is empty. You can help by adding to it.

R[link]

• Robert Rauschenberg
• Man Ray
• Lou Reed
• Frederic Remington
• Diego Rivera
• Jerome Robbins
• Paul Robeson
• Norman Rockwell
• Richard Rodgers
• Will Rogers
• Arthur Rubinstein

S[link]

• Mort Sahl
• Augustus Saint-Gaudens
• Waldo Pressman Salt
• Charles M. Schulz
• Martin Scorsese
• Pete Seeger
• Maurice Sendak
• Rod Serling
• Neil Simon
• Paul Simon
• Isaac Bashevis Singer
• W. Eugene Smith
• Alfred Stieglitz
• Isaac Stern
• George Stevens
• Preston Sturges
• William Styron
• Sun Records
• Sweet Honey in the Rock

T[link]

• Paul Taylor
• Dalton Trumbo

U[link]

This section is empty. You can help by adding to it.

V[link]

• Sarah Vaughan
• Gore Vidal

W[link]

• Andy Warhol
• Warner Brothers
• Alice Waters
• Muddy Waters
• Billy Wilder
• Hank Williams
• Tennessee Williams
• William Wyler

X[link]

This section is empty. You can help by adding to it.

Y[link]

Neil Young

Z[link]

Funding[link]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

• Cuismart (November 2, 1998-July 6, 2006)
• Le Cordon Bleu (August 18, 2004)
• The Charles H. Revsion Foundation (July 21, 1998-Present)
• Carnegie Corporation of New York (July 6, 1983-Present)
• Park Foundation (January 6, 1996-2006)
• National Endowment for the Humanities (August 24, 1994–December 26, 2005)
• National Endowment for the Arts (July 6, 1983–present)
• Rosland P. Walter (May 1, 1992–present)
• The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations (2009–present)
• American Playhouse (2001–present)
• Corporation for Public Broadcasting (January 6, 1983–present)
• Institute for Civil Society (1999-2005)
• Viewers Like You (January 6, 1983–present)
• MasterCard (August 29, 2000–August 31, 2007)
• Apple Inc. (August 29, 2000–2008)
• American Express (August 24, 1994-August 31, 1995)

References[link]

External links[link]

• PBS: American Masters

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (December 2010)

Andre Dubus III (born 1959) is an American novelist and writer of short stories. He is a member of the faculty at the University of Massachusetts Lowell.

Early life and career[link]

Son of the Louisiana-born writer Andre Dubus, Andre Dubus III grew up in mill towns in the Merrimack River valley along the Massachusetts - New Hampshire border. He began writing fiction at age 22 just a few months after graduating from the University of Texas at Austin with a Bachelors Degree in sociology. Because he preferred to write in the morning, going from "the dream world to the dream world", as the Irish writer Edna O'Brien puts it, he took mainly night jobs: bartender, office cleaner, halfway house counselor, and for six months worked as an assistant to a private investigator/bounty hunter. Over the years he has also worked as a self-employed carpenter and college writing teacher.^[1]

Dubus' novel House of Sand and Fog (1999) was a finalist for the National Book Award^[2] and the basis for an Academy award-nominated film.^[3] His 2011 memoir Townie tells of growing up poor in Haverhill after his parents' divorce, street fighting, and eventually boxing, and deals extensively with his relationship with his father.

Affiliations[link]

A member of PEN American Center, Andre Dubus III has served as a panelist for The National Book Foundation, The National Endowment for the Arts, and has taught writing at Harvard University, Tufts University, Emerson College, and the University of Massachusetts Lowell where he is a full-time faculty member.

Honors[link]

Dubus' work has been included in The Best American Essays of 1994, The Best Spiritual Writing of 1999, and The Best of Hope Magazine. He has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, The National Magazine Award for fiction, The Pushcart Prize, and was a Finalist for the Rome Prize Fellowship from the Academy of Arts and Letters. Dubus's novel House of Sand and Fog was a fiction finalist for the National Book Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Booksense Book of the Year, and was an Oprah Book Club Selection and #1 New York Times bestseller. It has been published in twenty languages and the 2003 film adaptation directed by Vadim Perelman was nominated for an academy award.

Personal[link]

Dubus is married to performer Fontaine Dollas Dubus. They reside in Newburyport, Massachusetts with their three children.

Andre Dubus III's aunt is the novelist Elizabeth Nell Dubus, mother of DeLaune Michel, also a novelist. His first cousin, once removed, is the acclaimed writer James Lee Burke, author of over thirty novels and short story collections and two-time winner of the Edgar Award for Best Crime Novel of the Year. James Lee Burke’s youngest daughter is the novelist Alafair Burke.

Works[link]

• The Cage Keeper and Other Stories (1989)
• Bluesman (1993)
• House of Sand and Fog (1999)
• The Garden of Last Days (2008)
• Townie - A Memoir (2011)

References[link]

External links[link]

• The Official Website of Andre Dubus III
• Bostonist interviews Andre Dubus III about his novel The Garden of Last Days
• Video: Andre Dubus III discusses his novel The Garden of Last Days
• Video: Andre Dubus III speaks at BookExpo (taped May 31, 2008/Los Angeles Convention Center)
• 2003 Interview on NPR's Fresh Air

Andre Dubus, II (August 11, 1936 - February 24, 1999) was an American short story writer, essayist, and autobiographer.^[1]

Biography[link]

Early life and education[link]

Andre Dubus was born in Lake Charles, Louisiana, the youngest child of a Cajun-Irish Catholic family. His two elder siblings are Kathryn and Beth. His surname is pronounced "Duh-BYOOSE", with the accent on the second syllable to rhyme with the noun "excuse." Dubus grew up in the Bayou country in Lafayette, Louisiana, and was educated by the Christian Brothers, a Catholic religious order that emphasized literature and writing. Dubus graduated from nearby McNeese State College in 1958 as a journalism and English major. Dubus then spent six years in the Marine Corps, eventually rising to the rank of captain. At this time he married his first wife and started a family. After leaving the Marine Corps, Dubus moved with his wife and four children to Iowa City, where he later graduated from the University of Iowa's Iowa Writers' Workshop with an MFA in creative writing, studying under Richard Yates. He admired Hemingway, Chekhov, and Cheever.^[2]

Personal difficulties[link]

Dubus's life was marked by several tragedies. His daughter was raped as a young woman, causing Dubus many years of paranoia over his loved ones' safety.^{[citation needed]} Dubus carried personal firearms to protect himself and those around him, until the night in the late 1980s, when he almost shot a man in a drunken argument outside a bar in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.^{[citation needed]}

Dubus was seriously injured in a car accident on the night of July 23, 1986. He was driving from Boston to his home in Haverhill, Massachusetts, and he stopped to assist two disabled motorists—brother and sister Luis and Luz Santiago. As Dubus assisted the injured Luz to the side of the highway, an oncoming car swerved and hit them. Luis was killed instantly; Luz survived because Dubus had pushed her out of the way. Dubus was critically injured and both his legs were crushed. After a series of unsuccessful operations, his left leg was amputated above the knee, and he eventually lost the use of his right leg. Dubus spent three years undergoing a series of painful operations and extensive physical therapy. Despite his efforts to walk with a prosthesis, chronic infections confined him to a wheelchair for the remainder of his life, and he battled clinical depression as a result of his condition. Over the course of these struggles Dubus's third wife left him, taking with her their two young daughters.

Final years[link]

To help Dubus with mounting medical bills, Andre's friends and fellow writers Kurt Vonnegut and John Updike held a special literary benefit. Dubus continued to write, producing two books of essays and a collection of short stories, and conducted a weekly writers' workshop in his home, meeting with a group of young writers.

Dubus also found a deeper religious faith at this time. A practicing Catholic all his life, Dubus found that the loss of his mobility drew him closer to God, and renewed his Catholic faith at a deeper level.^{[citation needed]}

Dubus spent his later years in Haverhill, until his death from a heart attack in 1999, at age 62. He is buried in Greenwood Cemetery, near where he lived, in Haverhill, Massachusetts.^[3]

Legacy[link]

He married three times and fathered six children. His son Andre Dubus III is also an author, whose most noted book is the novel House of Sand and Fog (1999), both a finalist for the National Book Award and the basis for an Academy award-nominated film of the same title. In 2011, Andre Dubus III published a memoir of his life, Townie, which tells of growing up in Haverhill and deals extensively with his relationship with his father and the impoverished conditions faced by his mother and siblings following her divorce from Andre Dubus.

Writing career[link]

Although he did write one novel, The Lieutenant, in 1967, Dubus considered himself primarily as a writer of short fiction. Throughout his career, he published most of his work in small, distinguished literary journals such as Ploughshares^[4] and Sewanee Review. Later in his career he placed stories in magazines such as The New Yorker and Playboy. Andre remained loyal to a small publishing firm run by David R. Godine that published his first works. When larger book publishers approached him with more lucrative deals, Dubus stayed with Godine, switching only to Alfred A. Knopf towards the end of his career to assist with medical bills.

Dubus's collections include: Separate Flights (1975), Adultery and Other Choices (1977), Finding a Girl in America (1980), The Times Are Never So Bad (1983), Voices from the Moon (1984), The Last Worthless Evening (1986), Selected Stories (1988), Broken Vessels (1991), Dancing After Hours (1996), and Meditations from a Movable Chair (1998). His writing awards include the PEN/Malamud, the Rea Award for the Short Story for excellence in short fiction, the Jean Stein Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and fellowships from the Guggenheim and MacArthur Foundations. Several writing awards are named after Dubus. His papers are archived at McNeese State University and Xavier University in Louisiana.

Cinematic adaptations[link]

After Dubus's death, his story "Killings" was adapted into Todd Field's In the Bedroom (2001) starring Sissy Spacek, Tom Wilkinson, and Marisa Tomei . The film was nominated for five Academy Awards – Best Picture, Actor in a Leading Role (Wilkinson), Actress in a Leading Role (Spacek), Actress in a Supporting Role (Tomei), and Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material Previously Published (Robert Festinger & Field).

The 2004 movie We Don't Live Here Anymore is based upon two of Dubus' novellas, "We Don't Live Here Anymore" and "Adultery." ^[5]

Bibliography[link]

• The Lieutenant (novel, 1967)
• Separate Flights (stories, 1975)
• Dubus, André (1977). Adultery and Other Choices. David R. Godine Publisher. ISBN 978-0-87923-284-9. http://books.google.com/?id=rih4OVgp_O4C&printsec=frontcover&dq=Andre+Dubus&cd=10#v=onepage&q=Andre%20Dubus.  (reprint David R. Godine Publisher, 1999, ISBN 978-0-87923-284-9)
• Dubus, André (1980). Finding a Girl in America. David R. Godine Publisher. ISBN 978-0-87923-393-8. http://books.google.com/?id=LlwI_0rUh6YC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Andre+Dubus&cd=9#v=onepage&q=Andre%20Dubus. 
• The Times Are Never So Bad (stories, 1983)
• Voices from the Moon (novella, 1984)
• The Last Worthless Evening (stories, 1986)
• Selected Stories (stories, 1988) reprint Vintage Books, 1996 ISBN 978-0-679-76730-5
• Dubus, André (1991). Broken Vessels. David R. Godine Publisher. ISBN 978-0-87923-948-0. http://books.google.com/?id=7G4r5T_rINoC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Andre+Dubus&cd=11#v=onepage&q=Andre%20Dubus.  (essays, reissue 1992)
• Dancing After Hours (stories, 1996) A.A. Knopf, ISBN 978-0-679-43107-7
• Meditations from a Moveable Chair (essays, 1998)
• In the Bedroom (stories, 2001) ISBN 978-1-4000-3077-4

Reviews[link]

• Updike, John (4 February 1985). "Books: Ungreat Lives". The New Yorker 60 (51): 94–101.  Review of Voices from the Moon.
• Joshua Bodwell (July/August 2008). "The Art of Reading Andre Dubus: We Don’t Have to Live Great Lives". Poets & Writers. http://www.pw.org/content/art_reading_andre_dubus_we_don%E2%80%99t_have_live_great_lives. 

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Andre Dubus

• Ravin, Richard (1999-03-18). "Remembering Andre Dubus". Salon. http://www1.salon.com/books/feature/1999/03/18feature.html. 
• "Symposium on Andre Dubus and Andre Dubus III". Saint Anselm College. http://www.anselm.edu/Academics/Majors-and-Departments/English/Symposium-on-Andre-Dubus-and-Andre-Dubus-III.htm.