Biography

Coville was born on May 16, 1950 in Syracuse, New York, where he resides to this day. Bruce Coville's father (born Arthur Farrington) was adopted by his aunt, where he adopted her surname of Coville. While waiting to publish his first novel, Coville was employed in a number of professions including toymaker, gravedigger, cookware salesman, assembly line worker, and elementary school teacher working with second and fourth graders.

Coville is wed to Katherine née Dietz (married when Coville was nineteen), and the two of them have three children: "a son, Orion, born in 1970; a daughter, Cara, born in 1975; and another son, Adam, born in 1981."

Literature

Coville began his love of books as a child, reading "Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, Tom Swift, and zillions of comic books". He read "books that made laugh, but also made shiver in terror." Wanting to impart those sorts of feeling to others is what spurred his love of writing. Coville knew he wanted to be a writer by his mid-teens, and by age 19 he "never looked back." His first novel, The Foolish Giant, was published in 1977.

With no set paradigm for writing, Coville has successfully tried everything from writing from a strict outline to "writing from the seat of my pants." As of 2015, he uses what he calls an "ever-expanding outline" where he outlines the beginning and end of a novel, and works to fill in the middle later.

Coville has written over 100 books for young adults, with translations in over a dozen languages. He has said that even with over 100 books under his belt, it gets harder and harder to write each successive book; he's concerned with living up to the work already written as well as not repeating himself.

Coville is also the co-founder of Full Cast Audio, an audiobook company devoted to recording full-cast, unabridged copies of young-adult fiction.

Awards

In 2012, Coville was the 23rd recipient of the "Empire State Award for Excellence in Literature for Young People" as awarded by the New York Library Association.

Books

Main article: Bruce Coville bibliography

[ Source: Wikipedia ]