Douglas Thayer lives in Provo, Utah, with his wife Donlu, and teaches creative writing at Brigham Young University. He has also published two collections of stories, the award-winning Under the Cottonwoods and Other Mormon Stories and Mr. Wahlquist in Yellowstone and Other Stories. Most recently he published The Conversion of Jeff Williams (Signature Books, 2003).
Doug Thayer, Douglas Thayer
LDS
LDS (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints)
Donlu DeWitt
Doug and Donlu have six children, six children-in-law, and (as of May 2012) eighteen grandchildren.
Work can be found on page 81 of the Spring 1970 issue of Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought.
1929-04-19
Provo, Utah
Germany
After graduating from Brigham Young University (BYU) with a bachelor’s degree in English, Thayer applied to law school, but then decided not to attend and started a doctorate in American literature at Stanford. Finding that he had little interest in research, he left the program after finishing a master’s degree. He later attended the University of Iowa, and finished an MFA in fiction writing.
Author, Interviewee
Thayer has also written literature not related to the Church, including the short story The Redtail Hawk, which won the Dialogue prize for imaginitive literature in 1969.