Author Bio
• Birth—October 28, 1951
• Where—Gladewater, Texas, USA
• Education—N/A
• Awards—8 Bram Stoker Awards; Grinzani Cavour Prize
for Literature; American Horror Award; (see more below)
• Currently—lives in Nacogdoches, Texas
Joe Richard Lansdale is an American author and martial-arts expert. He has written novels and stories in many genres, including Western, horror, science fiction, mystery, and suspense. He has also written for comics as well as Batman: The Animated Series.
Frequent features of Lansdale's writing are usually deeply ironic, strange or absurd situations or characters, such as Elvis and JFK battling a soul-sucking Egyptian mummy in a nursing home (the plot of his Bram Stoker Award-nominated novella, Bubba Ho-Tep, which was made into a movie by Don Coscarelli).
He is perhaps best known for his Hap and Leonard series of novels which feature two friends, Hap Collins and Leonard Pine, who live in the fictional town of Laborde, in East Texas, and find themselves solving a variety of often unpleasant crimes. The characters themselves are an unlikely pairing; Hap is a white working class laborer in his mid forties who once protested against the war in Vietnam, and Leonard is a gay black Vietnam vet. Both of them are accomplished fighters, and the stories (told from Hap's narrative point of view) feature a great deal of violence, profanity and sex. Lansdale paints a picture of East Texas which is essentially "good" but blighted by racism, ignorance, urban and rural deprivation and corruption in public officials. Some of the subject matter is extremely dark, and includes scenes of brutal violence. These novels are also characterized by sharp humor and "wisecracking" dialogue.
His current new release publisher is Mulholland Books, which in 2012 released Edge of Dark Water. About four friends who journey down the Sabine River in East Texas with the ashes of their dead friend and a stolen cache of money, the novel has inspired comparisons to Twain's Huck Finn and Dickey's Deliverence.
Lansdale, who was born in Gladewater, Texas, now lives in Nacogdoches and is the writer in residence at Stephen F. Austin State University. He also teaches at his own Shen Chuan martial arts school and is a member of both the United States Martial Arts Hall of Fame and Soke and the International Martial Arts Hall of Fame. He is the father of actress and musician Kasey Lansdale.
Awards
Joe Lansdale has won eight Bram Stoker Awards over the course of his long career—in the Short Fiction, Long Fiction (incl. novellas), Anthology, and Other Media (incl. comics) categories.
1988 - Night They Missed the Horror Show"- short story
1989 - On the Far Side of the Cadillac Desert With Dead Folks - novella
1992 - The Events Concerning a Nude Fold-Out Found in a Harlequin Romance"- short story
1993 - Jonah Hex: Two Gun Mojo - Comic Book
1997 - The Big Blow - novel
1999 - Mad Dog Summer (tied) - short story
2006 - Retro Pulp Tales (tied) Anthology
Lansdale was nominated for the Bram Stoker Award nine other times.
Other awards include:
1990 - British Fantasy Award, Best Short Story - "On the Far Side of the Cadillac Desert With Dead Folks"
2000 - Edgar Award, Best Novel - The Bottoms
2000 - Herodotus Award, Best Historical Mystery - The Bottoms
Lansdale is also frequently cited as winning the American Mystery Award, the Horror Critics Award, the Shot in the Dark International Crime Writer’s award, the Booklist Editor’s Award, and the Critic’s Choice Award. The specifics are difficult to track down at present, but it is likely that at least some of these were awarded to The Bottoms, which is by far his most acclaimed novel.
The Horror Writers Association gave him the Lifetime Achievement Award for 2011, which he received at the Bram Stoker Awards Banquet in Salt Lake City, Utah on March 31, 2012.
On 19 October 2012 he was inducted into The Texas Literary Hall of Fame. (Bio and awards adapted from Wikiipedia.)