Dates

• Existence: 1920-2008

Biography

Oakley Hall was born in San Diego on July 1, 1920 and raised mostly in Hawaii, where his mother took him after her divorce. She supported them by making greeting cards with shells pasted on them. He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 1943 then served in the Marines during World War II. He studied writing at Columbia University and published his first novel, Murder City, in 1949. After a year studying abroad he came to Iowa, where he received a MFA in Fine Arts from the Iowa Writer?s Workshop in 1950. While he was attending the University of Iowa he was writing his novel, So Many Doors, which was published in 1950.   He taught at the writing program at University of California Irvine for many years, where he mentored such writers as Richard Ford and Michael Chabon. After the death of Wallace Stegner (who also has ties to Iowa, having been born in Lake Mills) Hall was considered the Dean of Western Coast writers. He began his career writing mystery novels and the tight plotting and precise characterizations developed doing this carried over into his literary fiction.   In 1969 he founded the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, whose most famous student is Amy Tan.   His most famous book, Warlock, is a retelling of the events at the OK Corral, and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in 1958. He wrote mostly books about the west, though he continued to write mysteries, including a series late in his career that centered around the journalist Ambrose Bierce.   He also wrote under the pseudonyms O. M. Hall and Jason Manor.   He married Barbara Edinger in 1945 and they had three daughters Brett Hall Jones, Tracy Hall, and writer, actor, and director Sands Hall; and one son, the actor and writer Oakley "Tad Hall."   Oakley Hall died May 12, 2008, in Nevada City, California.

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