HANNAH, BARRY

born April 23, 1942, Meridian, Miss., U.S. American author of darkly comic, often violent novels and short stories set in the Deep South. Hannah was educated at Mississippi College (B.A., 1964) and the University of Arkansas (M.A., 1966; M.F.A., 1967). He subsequently taught writing at many schools, including the universities of Alabama, Iowa, Montana, and Mississippi. His first novel, Geronimo Rex (1972), which received a National Book Award nomination, is a raucous coming-of-age story addressing the theme of racism. In the less successful Nightwatchmen (1973), both a secret killer and a hurricane are unleashed upon a small college town. Hannah's reputation as a daring stylist was secured with Airships, a collection of short stories that appeared in 1978. The book's recurrent motif of American Civil War valour is developed more fully in the short novel Ray (1980). Hannah's later works include The Tennis Handsome (1983), which portrays the misadventures of a dissipated professional tennis player; Captain Maximus (1985), containing short stories and the outline of an original screenplay; the novel Hey Jack! (1987); Never Die (1991), an offbeat treatment of the western genre; a collection of stories entitled Bats Out of Hell (1993); and Men Without Ties (1994), a collaboration with fashion designer Gianni Versace and several others.