Daniel Quinn

Daniel Quinn was born in Omaha, Nebraska, and was raised Catholic. He later studied at a variety of universities, including Saint Louis University, where he earned a B.A. in English. Afterwards, he studied at the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani in Bardstown, Kentucky, in the hopes of becoming a monk. Quinn fell out with his mentors at the abbey—a falling out that contributed to his abandonment of Catholicism altogether in the mid-1960s. Following his departure from Kentucky, Quinn moved to New York and worked in publishing for many years. He didn’t write a novel of his own until 1988—this novel, Dreamer, was a work of science fiction, and while it earned fairly positive reviews, it didn’t sell well. Quinn’s breakthrough came in 1991, when he wrote his best-known novel, the philosophical dialogue Ishmael. Ishmael won Quinn the prestigious Turner Award, organized by the media billionaire Ted Turner. Following the success of Ishmael, Quinn wrote two other philosophical novels about anthropology and the environment: The Story of B (1996), and My Ishmael (1997). Since 2000, he’s been involved in a great number of rallies, conferences, and forums regarding issues of anarchism, environmentalism, and pacifism.