Curtis Harnack '49
Grinnell in the News 2013-07-15
Summary:
Curt graduated from and was also an English instructor at Grinnell College and received his M.A. from Columbia. His first adult job was at the United Nations Secretariat as a collator of documents, 1951-1952. He also was an instructor and visiting lecturer with the Iowa Writers Workshop in the late 1950s and early 1960s and was on the literature faculty of Sarah Lawrence College, where he co-founded the American Studies program. With Paul Engle he co-edited the O. Henry Collection, Prize Stories 1958 and 1959. He served as president of the School of American Ballet from 1992 to 1997. In 1979 Curt toured Hungary, Yugoslavia, and Romania under the auspices of the U.S. State Department to lecture on American literature and he traveled to China in 1986 on a U.S./China Arts Exchange program. He lived for periods in England, France, Italy, and Iran.