The Emergence of Frank Waters

By embracing the full storytelling and archetypal potential of the American Southwest, Frank Waters wrote some of the finest literature of the 20th century. Through his 28 volumes of fiction and non-fiction, including Book of the Hopi and The Man Who Killed the Deer, Waters’ achievement as both a novelist and a philosopher is comparable to Hermann Hesse, John Steinbeck, and Terry Tempest Williams, a rare accomplishment in the literary world. As James Thomas, editor of Best of the West, states: "Waters is now … on the cutting edge of just about everything we take seriously in this country: the natural environment, our socio-psychological environment …, our political relationship with the past, and our political, ecological, and spiritual relationship with the future.”

The Emergence of Frank Waters: A Critical Reader serves as an essential introduction to Frank Waters’ life, work, and sociocultural contexts for scholars and general readers alike. In its 23 essays, this volume thoroughly explores Waters’s visionary novels and non-fiction books, writings that are vital to understanding our transformational times.

Born on July 25th, 1902, in Colorado Springs, Frank Waters began his twenty-eight book career in 1930 with The Lizard Woman, a novel set on the Mexican border. For the next six decades, he would go on to write many classics of fiction and non-fiction, including The Man Who Killed the Deer (1942), Masked Gods (1950), Book of the Hopi (1963), Pike’s Peak (1971), and Mountain Dialogues (1981). Along the way, Waters engineered the first phone lines across the Mojave, wrote film scripts for Hollywood, edited a bilingual newspaper in New Mexico, penned public relations releases for Nevada’s nuclear test range, and taught university level creative writing classes in Colorado. Waters received numerous honors in his lifetime, including the New Mexico Arts Commission Award for Achievement and Excellence in Literature, seven honorary doctorates, and the declaration of “Frank Waters Day” by New Mexico Governor Bruce King in 1993. Frank Waters died in his home in Arroyo Seco, New Mexico on June 3,