John Alexander Graves, III

Born in Fort Worth and educated at Rice University, John Graves went on to serve in the Marine Corps during WWII, and to return from the war to become a master author. He wrote Goodbye to a River, winner of the 1961 Collins Award from the Texas Institute of Letters. The book recalled a 1957 canoe trip down the Brazos River between Possum Kingdom dam and Lake Whitney, celebrating this section of the river that was threatened by a series of flood control dams. He was also the author of Hard Scrabble: Observations on a Patch of Land (1974), which chronicled Graves’ effort to reclaim over 400 acres of overgrazed land in the Texas Hill Country, and also told of the experience of building a sense of belonging with that piece of land. In addition, he taught at Texas Christian University (1958-1965), and published stories in the Atlantic, Esquire, Holiday, The New Yorker, Town and Country and other magazines.