Chicago author, Columbia College professor Don De Grazia dies at 56
CHICAGO (CBS) -- Celebrated author and Columbia College professor Don De Grazia died earlier this month.
De Grazia, known in particular for the novel "American Skin," died Thursday, June 13. He was 56.
According a 1997 Chicago Reader profile, De Grazia was born in Chicago in 1968, but moved with his family to Lake County near the Wisconsin state line as a boy. He returned to the city as a teenager, joined the National Guard, and served a stint in the U.S. Army at Fort Benning, Georgia, before earning a GED and ending up at Columbia College Chicago, the Reader reported.
He went on to earn his bachelor's and master's degrees from Columbia College, and soon became a professor at the school. Columbia College credited De Grazia with helping build its creative writing program.
As noted in a 2000 profile by Gina Frangello in the Reader, De Grazia in 1996 was teaching in the fiction writing department at Columbia College while moonlighting as a bouncer at the Metro in Wrigleyville, and living in a Chicago YMCA. De Grazia spent his last $75 to send an "unagented, unsolicited novel" called "American Skin" to Jonathan Caper, an English publisher, Frangello wrote.
The book was published in the U.K. in 1998, and in the U.S. two years later—by which time he was teaching full-time at Columbia College, Frangello wrote.
As described by publisher Simon & Schuster, "American Skin" is "a timeless story about a young man's coming-of-age as well as a stunning portrait of the class and racial tensions that pervade our society."
The description continues: "Alex Verdi is on the lam, fleeing from the police who have arrested his parents on drug charges and want him for questioning. Traveling to Chicago, he joins a multiracial group of anti-Nazi skinheads and embarks on an odyssey that takes him from the city's embattled streets to an Army boot camp to Northwestern's plush campus, and finally lands him amid the horrors of maximum-security prison."
Much of the action in "American Skin" is set in the area around Clark Street and Belmont Avenue in Lakeview—an area once known for the punks and skinheads who hung out in the parking lot of a Dunkin' Donuts that has since been razed for a Target store.
De Grazia also wrote the play "The Creatives" with Socttish author Irvine Welsh, and served as the editor of the literary journal F Magazine. De Grazia was also the manager of the co-ed 16-nch softball team the Lee Elia Experience—a reference to former Chicago Cubs manager Lee Elia, who famously went on a rant in 1983 about Cubs fans who shouted jeers at their own team.
At Columbia College this past spring, De Grazia had taught the courses, "Craft and Process Seminar in Fiction: Fiction Writers and Censorship," and "Fiction Workshop: Intermediate," according to the Columbia Chronicle.
Writing for the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame, Donald G. Evans placed De Grazia in the company of some enduring Chicago household names.
"Like Marshall Field or Mike Royko, Don made such giant contributions to Chicago's life and culture that we'll always think of him as still a part of us," Evans wrote.
De Grazia is survived by his wife, Siera, and daughter, Daisy Elia. A memorial service was held this past weekend.
