Wallace E. Stegner is an author and Professor Emeritus of Literature and Creative Writing at Stanford University. He has taught at Iowa, Wisconsin, Harvard and from 1945 until 1972, at Stanford.
He established the Creative Writing Center at Stanford. He was three times a Guggenheim Fellow, the author of several prize-winning short stories and novelettes, and the Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction in 1972 with his novel Angle of Repose. Another of his many novels, The Spectator Bird, won the National Book Award for fiction in 1977.
Prof. Stegner has donated nine manuscripts and associated materials to The University of Iowa Libraries' collection of manuscripts.
He is a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Prof. Stegner has also served as West Coast Editor for Houghton Mifflin Company, publishers, as assistant to the United States Secretary of the Interior, Washington D.C. and has been a member and chairman of the National Parks Advisory Board and Editor-in-Chief for the American West Magazine, Palo Alto, Calif.
He received two degrees from the UI, a MA in English in 1932 and a PhD in English in 1935.
Since 1963, the University of Iowa has annually recognized accomplished alumni and friends with Distinguished Alumni Awards. Awards are presented in seven categories: Achievement, Service, Hickerson Recognition, Faculty, Staff, Recent Graduate, and Friend of the University.