# Roderick Townley

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{{short description|American writer}}

{{Infobox writer <!-- for more information see [:Template:Infobox writer/doc](/source/%3ATemplate%3AInfobox_writer%2Fdoc) -->
|image =
|imagesize = 150px |
| name        = Roderick Townley
| caption     =
| birth_date  = {{Birth date and age|1942|6|7|mf=y}}
| birth_place =
| occupation  = [Writer](/source/Writer)
| genre       = [Young adult fiction](/source/Young_adult_fiction), [Poetry](/source/Poetry), [Literary criticism](/source/Literary_criticism), [Adult fiction](/source/Fiction)
| movement    =
| influences  =
| website = {{URL|http://www.RoderickTownley.com}}
}}

'''Roderick Townley''' (born June 7, 1942) is an American [author](/source/author) of juvenile, young adult, and adult books, including books of poetry, nonfiction, and literary criticism. He received his Ph.D. from Rutgers University, New Brunswick, and was for many years a poet and fiction writer, and for a time lived in New York City and wrote for [TV Guide](/source/TV_Guide), [The Village Voice](/source/The_Village_Voice) and other publications. In 2001, he began the Sylvie Cycle, a [metafictional](/source/metafictional) series about the spunky, fictional Princess Sylvie who lives her life in a book.

== Biography ==

Roderick Townley has published over a dozen books, comprising [poetry](/source/poetry), [fiction](/source/fiction), [nonfiction](/source/nonfiction), and [literary criticism](/source/literary_criticism). The Sylvie Cycle, his trilogy of middle grade novels, has been widely praised and appears in several foreign editions, as well as in large print and audio versions. He has also written two [young adult novels](/source/young_adult_novels), ''Sky'' (Atheneum, 2004), and [http://www.rodericktownley.com/index_inside.html ''The Red Thread: A Novel in Three Incarnations''] (Atheneum, 2007).

Mr. Townley taught in [Chile](/source/Chile) on a [Fulbright](/source/Fulbright) scholarship, worked in [New York City](/source/New_York_City) as an editor, and now writes from his home in Kansas. Along the way, he has won a number of honors, including the Peregrine Prize for Short Fiction, the Thorpe Menn Award, the Kansas Arts Commission Fellowship in Fiction, the Kansas Governor’s Arts Award, and First Prize in two contests sponsored by the [Academy of American Poets](/source/Academy_of_American_Poets). His novel, [http://www.rodericktownley.com/index_inside.html ''The Great Good Thing''] (the first volume in The Sylvie Cycle), was a Top Ten [Book Sense](/source/Book_Sense) Pick and has been optioned for film.

Townley continues to write poetry, publishing his work in [The Paris Review](/source/The_Paris_Review), [The Yale Review](/source/The_Yale_Review), [The North American Review](/source/The_North_American_Review), and other journals.

Mr. Townley has two children, Jesse and Grace, and is married to poet and yoga instructor Wyatt Townley.

== Bibliography ==

===Poetry===
*''Blue Angels Black Angels'' (1972)
*''Three Musicians'' (1978)
*''Final Approach'' (1986)

===Literary criticism===
*''The Early Poetry of William Carlos Williams'' (1975)
*''Night Errands: How Poets Use Dreams'' (1998)

===Adult fiction===
*''Minor Gods, St. Martin’s Press'' (1977)

===Young adult===
*''The Great Good Thing: The Sylvie Cycle, Book One'' (2001)
*''Into The Labyrinth: The Sylvie Cycle, Book Two'' (2002)
*''Sky'' (2004)
*''The Constellation of Sylvie: The Sylvie Cycle, Book Three'' (2005)
*''The Red Thread'' (2007)
*''The Blue Shoe'' (2009)
*''The Door in the Forest'' (2011)
*''A Bitter Magic'' (2015)

== External links/references ==
*[http://www.RoderickTownley.com Roderick Townley's Official Webpage]
*[http://www.simonsays.com/content/destination.cfm?tab=22&pid=331382 Simon & Schuster: Roderick Townley]
*[http://www.kansaspoets.com/ks_poets/townley_robert.htm Kansas Poets: Roderick Townley]

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Townley, Roderick}}
Category:1942 births
Category:Living people
Category:American children's writers
Category:Writers from Kansas

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Adapted from the Wikipedia article [Roderick Townley](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roderick_Townley) by Wikipedia contributors ([contributor history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roderick_Townley?action=history)). Available under [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Changes may have been made.