Daniel Quinn

Daniel Quinn was an American author, best known for his novel Ishmael which won the Turner Tomorrow Fellowship Award in 1991. Quinn was born in Omaha, Nebraska, and grew up there. He pursued his higher education at St. Louis University, the University of Vienna, and Loyola University of Chicago. Before starting his writing career, Quinn worked in publishing for twenty years in Chicago.

Quinn's career as an author began in earnest after he walked away from his successful career in publishing in 1977. He set his feet on a path that would change his life completely, made up of books that would eventually lead to Ishmael. The novel, which was the fifth version of his book, was written in 1981 and was the first to be a novel, inhabited by a telepathic gorilla named Ishmael. Ishmael was a life-changing book that won the largest prize ever given to a single literary work and has been translated into some 25 languages. It has been used in classrooms from mid-school to graduate school in various courses.

After the success of Ishmael, Quinn wrote several other books, including Providence: The Story of a Fifty-Year Vision Quest (1995), The Story of B (1996), My Ishmael: A Sequel (1997), Beyond Civilization: Humanity's Next Great Adventure (1999), After Dachau, The Holy, and At Woomeroo, a collection of short stories. Quinn's writing was inspired by the guiding principle of André Gide: "What another would have done as well as you, do not do it. What another would have said as well as you, do not say it, written as well as you, do not write it." Quinn and his wife, Rennie, have lived in Chicago, Santa Fe and Madrid, New Mexico, Austin, Texas, and currently reside in Houston.