Jim Harrison Books in Order
Explore Jim Harrison's books in order with quick summaries, reading tips, and where to start, plus notes on his novels, novellas, poems, and essays.
Last updated: June 7, 2026
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Jim Harrison books in publication order
139 books
Plain Song
by Jim Harrison
1965
Harrison's debut poetry book, full of close looking at the natural world and the rough edges of young adulthood. The poems already show his mix of hunger, humor, and plain American speech.
Locations
by Jim Harrison
1968
A nonfiction collection built from travel notes, food writing, and literary pieces. Harrison moves through specific places and shows how a landscape can pull memory, mood, and argument into focus.
Conversations with Jorge Luis Borges
by Jim Harrison
1969
Interviews with Jorge Luis Borges spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Outlyer and Ghazals
by Jim Harrison
1971
Poems that mix plainspoken narrative with the tight, repeating music of the ghazal. Harrison writes about sex, drinking, landscape, and mortality, letting form sharpen the bite of what he has to say.
Wolf
by Jim Harrison
1971
A man retreats to the northern Michigan wilderness, hoping to glimpse a wolf, and ends up telling the story of his life. Part confession, part survival trip, it keeps circling loneliness, hunger, and the need to keep moving.
A Good Day to Die
by Jim Harrison
1973
A group of restless young men drift into radical plans, and the line between protest and violence starts to blur. Set against threatened landscapes, the novel follows their anger, their bravado, and the consequences they can't control.
Letters to Yesenin
by Jim Harrison
1973
A book-length sequence of poems addressed to the Russian poet Sergei Yesenin, written as argument, confession, and tribute. Harrison uses the imagined correspondence to talk about drink, desire, art, and the urge to disappear.
Farmer
by Jim Harrison
1976
A middle-aged teacher and farmer finds his ordinary life tilting into obsession, desire, and fear as he faces family illness and his own restlessness. Harrison keeps the story intimate, with dark humor and uncomfortable honesty.
Legends of the Fall
by Jim Harrison
1979
Three novellas about love, violence, and reinvention, including the title story of a father and three sons in the northern Rockies. The collection moves fast and hits hard, showing how a single choice can echo for years.
Conversations with Czeslaw Milosz
by Jim Harrison
1981
Interviews with Czeslaw Milosz spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Natural World
by Jim Harrison
1982
Poems rooted in place, animals, weather, and the uneasy life of the body. Harrison's lines shift from rough humor to sudden clarity, keeping the natural world close and refusing easy comfort.
Selected & New Poems, 1961-1981
by Jim Harrison
1982
A wide snapshot of Harrison's early poetry, pairing selections from his first books with new work from the same period. The poems move through love, grief, and the outdoors in a direct, talk-to-you voice.
Warlock
by Jim Harrison
1982
Set in the frontier town of Warlock, New Mexico, this novel follows a community edging toward violence, with lawmen and outlaws testing what justice can mean. Harrison treats the West as messy human ground, not myth.
Conversations with Graham Greene
by Jim Harrison
1983
Interviews with Graham Greene spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Sundog
by Jim Harrison
1984
After years building dams, foreman Robert Corvus Strang is injured and forced to look back on a life of work, travel, love, and damage. A journalist's visit prompts his tough, restless self-portrait.
Conversations with Eudora Welty
by Jim Harrison
1985
Interviews with Eudora Welty spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Conversations With Isaac Bashevis Singer
by Jim Harrison
1985
Interviews with Isaac Bashevis Singer spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Conversations with Walker Percy
by Jim Harrison
1985
Interviews with Walker Percy spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Conversations with William Styron
by Jim Harrison
1985
Interviews with William Styron spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Conversations with Ernest Hemingway
by Jim Harrison
1986
Interviews with Ernest Hemingway spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Conversations with Lillian Hellman
by Jim Harrison
1986
Interviews with Lillian Hellman spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Conversations with Malcolm Cowley
by Jim Harrison
1986
Interviews with Malcolm Cowley spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Conversations with Tennessee Williams
by Jim Harrison
1986
Interviews with Tennessee Williams spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Conversations with Arthur Miller
by Jim Harrison
1987
Interviews with Arthur Miller spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Conversations with Flannery O'Connor
by Jim Harrison
1987
Interviews with Flannery O'Connor spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Conversations with Katherine Anne Porter
by Jim Harrison
1987
Interviews with Katherine Anne Porter spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Conversations with Peter Taylor
by Jim Harrison
1987
Interviews with Peter Taylor spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Truman Capote: Conversations
by Jim Harrison
1987
Interviews with Truman Capote spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Conversations with Edward Albee
by Jim Harrison
1988
Interviews with Edward Albee spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Conversations with Erskine Caldwell
by Jim Harrison
1988
Interviews with Erskine Caldwell spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Conversations with Kurt Vonnegut
by Jim Harrison
1988
Gathering interviews from across his career, this book lets Vonnegut talk about his books, his war experiences, his politics, and his writing habits in his own conversational voice. The exchanges show him by turns generous, cranky, and funny as he fields questions from many eras.
Conversations with Norman Mailer
by Jim Harrison
1988
Interviews with Norman Mailer spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Dalva
by Jim Harrison
1988
Dalva Northridge, a middle-aged social worker, heads back to her family's Nebraska roots and the history she has tried to outrun. As she searches for the daughter she gave up, the story opens into a multigenerational saga tied to the Sioux and the land.
Conversations with James Baldwin
by Jim Harrison
1989
This volume gathers twenty seven interviews with Baldwin from 1961 to 1987, drawn from newspapers, radio, and journals. The conversations show his shifting thoughts on literature, politics, sexuality, faith, and what it meant to live as a Black writer between two continents.
Conversations with Joyce Carol Oates
by Jim Harrison
1989
Interviews with Joyce Carol Oates spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Conversations with Robert Graves
by Jim Harrison
1989
Interviews with Robert Graves spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Conversations with Robertson Davies
by Jim Harrison
1989
Interviews with Robertson Davies spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Conversations with Shelby Foote
by Jim Harrison
1989
Interviews with Shelby Foote spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Conversations with Eugene O'Neill
by Jim Harrison
1990
Interviews with Eugene O'Neill spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Conversations with John Gardner
by Jim Harrison
1990
Interviews with John Gardner spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Conversations with Raymond Carver
by Jim Harrison
1990
Interviews with Raymond Carver spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Conversations with Richard Wilbur
by Jim Harrison
1990
Interviews with Richard Wilbur spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Conversations with Tom Wolfe
by Jim Harrison
1990
Interviews with Tom Wolfe spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
The Theory and Practice of Rivers and New Poems
by Jim Harrison
1990
Poems that use rivers as both real places and working metaphors, moving between landscape and inner weather. Harrison writes with a steady eye for detail and a sense of time passing, sometimes with a grin.
The Woman Lit by Fireflies
by Jim Harrison
1990
Three novellas set among driftless lives and sudden passions, including the first appearance of Brown Dog in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Harrison writes with quick comedy and sharp pain, letting small decisions turn into lasting trouble.
Conversations with Bernard Malamud
by Jim Harrison
1991
Interviews with Bernard Malamud spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Conversations with Elizabeth Spencer
by Jim Harrison
1991
Interviews with Elizabeth Spencer spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Conversations with Reynolds Price
by Jim Harrison
1991
Interviews with Reynolds Price spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Conversations with M. F. K. Fisher
by Jim Harrison
1992
Interviews with M. F. K. Fisher spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Conversations with Nikki Giovanni
by Jim Harrison
1992
Interviews with Nikki Giovanni spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Conversations with Robert Coles
by Jim Harrison
1992
Interviews with Robert Coles spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Conversations With Thornton Wilder
by Jim Harrison
1992
Interviews with Thornton Wilder spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Conversations with Paul Bowles
by Jim Harrison
1993
Interviews with Paul Bowles spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Conversations with Richard Wright
by Jim Harrison
1993
Interviews with Richard Wright spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Just Before Dark
by Jim Harrison
1993
A gathering of nonfiction pieces, from food and travel writing to literary essays and memories from the road. Read together, they show Harrison's range and his habit of finding a story in almost any place.
More Conversations with Walker Percy
by Jim Harrison
1993
More interviews with Walker Percy, continuing discussion of books, craft, and life. Read after the first volume to catch the later voice and concerns.
Conversations with Amiri Baraka
by Jim Harrison
1994
Interviews with Amiri Baraka spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Conversations with Henry Miller
by Jim Harrison
1994
Interviews with Henry Miller spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Conversations with Louise Erdrich and Michael Dorris
by Louise Erdrich & Jim Harrison
1994
A collection of interviews that offers insight into the unique literary partnership between Erdrich and Dorris. They discuss their collaborative process, the themes of their individual books, and the complexities of writing about Native American experience.
Conversations with Saul Bellow
by Jim Harrison
1994
Interviews with Saul Bellow spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Conversations with Toni Morrison
by Jim Harrison
1994
Interviews with Toni Morrison spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Julip
by Jim Harrison
1994
A trio of novellas that moves between jailhouses, bars, and back roads, following people who make bad choices for understandable reasons. Harrison keeps the tone darkly funny, with sex and violence never far from the surface.
Conversations with Chester Himes
by Jim Harrison
1995
Interviews with Chester Himes spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Conversations with Ernest Gaines
by Jim Harrison
1995
Interviews with Ernest Gaines spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Conversations with Ishmael Reed
by Jim Harrison
1995
Interviews with Ishmael Reed spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Conversations with Ralph Ellison
by Jim Harrison
1995
Interviews with Ralph Ellison spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Conversations with Susan Sontag
by Jim Harrison
1995
Interviews with Susan Sontag spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
After Ikkyu and Other Poems
by Jim Harrison
1996
Late poems that keep company with aging, hunger, and the natural world. Harrison nods to the poet-monk Ikkyu while staying rooted in his own plainspoken voice and quick, sharp turns.
Conversations with Derek Walcott
by Jim Harrison
1996
Interviews with Derek Walcott spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Conversations with Elizabeth Bishop
by Jim Harrison
1996
Interviews with Elizabeth Bishop spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Conversations with Pauline Kael
by Jim Harrison
1996
Interviews with Pauline Kael spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
More Conversations with Eudora Welty
by Jim Harrison
1996
More interviews with Eudora Welty, continuing discussion of books, craft, and life. Read after the first volume to catch the later voice and concerns.
Conversations with Chinua Achebe
by Jim Harrison
1997
Interviews with Chinua Achebe spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Conversations with N. Scott Momaday
by Jim Harrison
1997
Interviews with N. Scott Momaday spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Conversations with V. S. Naipaul
by Jim Harrison
1997
Interviews with V. S. Naipaul spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Conversations with Denise Levertov
by Jim Harrison
1998
Interviews with Denise Levertov spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Conversations with Maxine Hong Kingston
by Jim Harrison
1998
Interviews with Maxine Hong Kingston spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
The Road Home
by Jim Harrison
1998
A return to the world of Dalva Northridge, told through a different narrator who tracks the family across decades. The novel moves between Nebraska history and present-day longing, asking what we inherit and what we can repair.
The Shape of the Journey
by Jim Harrison
1998
A selected poetry volume that gathers work from across Harrison's early decades. The poems move between the Midwest and the West, mixing blunt humor with close attention to birds, weather, desire, and loss.
Conversations with E. L. Doctorow
by Jim Harrison
1999
Interviews with E. L. Doctorow spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Conversations With John Fowles
by Jim Harrison
1999
Interviews with John Fowles spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Conversations With William Faulkner
by Jim Harrison
1999
Interviews with William Faulkner spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Conversations with Leslie Marmon Silko
by Jim Harrison
2000
Interviews with Leslie Marmon Silko spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Conversations with Salman Rushdie
by Jim Harrison
2000
Interviews with Salman Rushdie spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Conversations with William S. Burroughs
by Jim Harrison
2000
Interviews with William S. Burroughs spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
The Beast God Forgot to Invent
by Jim Harrison
2000
Three novellas that lean into Harrison's mix of yearning and misbehavior, with characters chasing sex, money, or escape and finding consequences instead. The stories are compact but spacious in memory, drifting between comedy and regret.
The Boy Who Ran to the Woods
by Jim Harrison
2000
A short children's story about a boy named Jimmy who suffers a serious eye injury and struggles with anger afterward. In the Michigan woods, animals and quiet routines help him find steadier ground.
Conversations with Chaim Potok
by Jim Harrison
2001
Interviews with Chaim Potok spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Conversations with Christopher Isherwood
by Jim Harrison
2001
Interviews with Christopher Isherwood spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Conversations with Richard Ford
by Jim Harrison
2001
Interviews with Richard Ford spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
The Raw and the Cooked
by Jim Harrison
2001
Essays about food, travel, and sport, written with Harrison's mix of appetite and skepticism. He moves from restaurants and recipes to fishing trips and literary arguments, always circling back to what pleasure costs.
Conversations with Clarence Major
by Jim Harrison
2002
Interviews with Clarence Major spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Conversations with Erica Jong
by Jim Harrison
2002
Interviews with Erica Jong spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Conversations with Jim Harrison
by Jim Harrison
2002
A collection of interviews with Jim Harrison, spanning decades of talk about poetry, fiction, hunting, food, and the writing life. He argues, jokes, and reflects, giving a candid sense of how his work and habits evolved.
Conversations with Margaret Walker
by Jim Harrison
2002
Interviews with Margaret Walker spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Conversations with Mary Gordon
by Jim Harrison
2002
Interviews with Mary Gordon spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Elie Wiesel: Conversations
by Jim Harrison
2002
Interviews with Elie Wiesel spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Off to the Side
by Jim Harrison
2002
Harrison's memoir, told in brisk scenes and sideways reflections, from growing up in Michigan to building a life as a working writer. He writes about friendships, failures, reading, and the daily discipline behind the books.
Braided Creek
by Jim Harrison
2003
A book of short poems exchanged between Jim Harrison and Ted Kooser, written like quick letters. The pieces are funny, warm, and attentive to birds, weather, food, and the ordinary days that make up a life.
Conversations with F. Scott Fitzgerald
by Jim Harrison
2003
Interviews with F. Scott Fitzgerald spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Conversations with Gwendolyn Brooks
by Jim Harrison
2003
Interviews with Gwendolyn Brooks spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Conversations with Rita Dove
by Jim Harrison
2003
Interviews with Rita Dove spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Conversations with Stanley Kaufmann
by Jim Harrison
2003
Interviews with Stanley Kaufmann spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Joseph Brodsky: Conversations
by Jim Harrison
2003
Interviews with Joseph Brodsky spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Conversations with Audre Lorde
by Jim Harrison
2004
Interviews with Audre Lorde spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Conversations with Gloria Naylor
by Jim Harrison
2004
Interviews with Gloria Naylor spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Conversations With John le Carré
by Jim Harrison
2004
Interviews with John le Carré spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Conversations with Ray Bradbury
by Jim Harrison
2004
Interviews with Ray Bradbury spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
True North
by Jim Harrison
2004
A son tries to make sense of his family's past and his father's damaging legacy in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. As he digs into old violence and money, the novel becomes a hard look at inheritance, guilt, and the cost of looking away.
Conversations with Don DeLillo
by Jim Harrison
2005
Interviews with Don DeLillo spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Conversations with Gabriel García Márquez
by Jim Harrison
2005
Interviews with Gabriel García Márquez spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Conversations with Gore Vidal
by Jim Harrison
2005
Interviews with Gore Vidal spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Conversations with Isaac Asimov
by Jim Harrison
2005
Interviews with Isaac Asimov spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Conversations with Jack Kerouac
by Jim Harrison
2005
Interviews with Jack Kerouac spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Conversations with Robert Penn Warren
by Jim Harrison
2005
Interviews with Robert Penn Warren spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
The Summer He Didn't Die
by Jim Harrison
2005
A collection of three late novellas about marriages, politics, and the ways people lie to themselves to get through a season. Harrison keeps the stakes human and close, with quick humor and sudden sadness.
Conversations with Thomas McGuane
by Jim Harrison
2006
Interviews with Thomas McGuane spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Saving Daylight
by Jim Harrison
2006
Poems that pay attention to daylight, seasons, and the way time slips. Harrison writes about love, anger, animals, and the body as it changes, mixing plain talk with sudden lyric turns.
Conversations with Larry Brown
by Jim Harrison
2007
Interviews with Larry Brown spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Conversations with Leon Forrest
by Jim Harrison
2007
Interviews with Leon Forrest spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Conversations with Sonia Sanchez
by Jim Harrison
2007
Interviews with Sonia Sanchez spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Returning to Earth
by Jim Harrison
2007
Told through several linked voices, this novel follows an extended family in Michigan's Upper Peninsula as illness forces them to talk honestly about love, obligation, and what they owe each other. It's a story about reconciliation, not easy fixes.
The English Major
by Jim Harrison
2008
After a bruising divorce, a former teacher and farmer hits the road with a plan to visit all fifty states. The trip turns into a funny, aching tour of motels, old friends, lust, and late-life reinvention.
In Search of Small Gods
by Jim Harrison
2009
A poetry collection grounded in the natural world, with poems that balance awe and skepticism. Harrison writes about animals, weather, desire, and loss, looking for meaning in small, stubborn details.
The Farmer's Daughter
by Jim Harrison
2009
Three novellas that range from rural desire to family fallout, including a return to Brown Dog in a later stage of his hard-living life. Harrison writes with rough tenderness, letting the landscape press against every decision.
The Etiquette of Freedom
by Jim Harrison
2010
A wide-ranging essay collection that swings from hunting and fishing to books, travel, and the stubborn pleasures of eating well. Harrison mixes story, opinion, and hard-won experience without smoothing the edges.
Great Leader
by Jim Harrison
2011
Detective Sunderson, close to retirement, starts looking into a self-styled guru running a cult near his Upper Peninsula home. What seems like local weirdness turns darker, and Sunderson's own appetites and doubts keep getting in the way.
Songs of Unreason
by Jim Harrison
2011
Poems that roam through wild places, memory, and the body, often in quick, conversational bursts. Harrison leans into contradiction, grief, and appetite, letting small observations open into bigger questions.
Brown Dog
by Jim Harrison
2013
A linked set of stories following Brown Dog, a mixed-blood misfit in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, as he drifts through jobs, women, and trouble. It's funny and bleak at once, with the woods always close and civilization never quite trusted.
Darkness Sticks to Everything: Collected and New Poems
by Jim Harrison
2013
A career-spanning poetry gathering that mixes earlier work with later poems, showing how Harrison returned again and again to hunger, animals, weather, and grief. The voice stays direct and human, even when the subject turns dark.
The River Swimmer
by Jim Harrison
2013
A trio of novellas about aging bodies, sudden lust, and the pull of water and wilderness. Harrison's characters keep trying to start over, even when history, family, and habit are already in the room.
Dead Man's Float
by Jim Harrison
2015
A late poetry collection that keeps circling hunger, weather, animals, and the plain fact of getting older. Harrison moves between rough humor and sudden tenderness, with short poems that feel like notes from the field.
The Big Seven
by Jim Harrison
2015
Retired detective Sunderson is back in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, older, meaner, and trying to keep his head down. When violence and old grudges arrive next door, his quiet retirement turns into a messy investigation.
The Ancient Minstrel
by Jim Harrison
2016
Harrison's late collection of novellas, moving between Michigan and farther-off roads, where older characters look for meaning in sex, friendship, and the natural world. The stories mix barroom comedy with moments of hard-earned clarity.
A Really Big Lunch
by Jim Harrison
2017
A selection of Jim Harrison's food writing and personal essays, moving from French bistros to home kitchens. Between meals he talks about travel, friendship, and aging, in a voice that stays blunt and funny.
Jim Harrison
by Jim Harrison
2019
A selection of Jim Harrison's most representative poems, chosen from across his career. It's a strong entry point to his poetic voice, mixing nature writing, lust, grief, and blunt humor in compact lines.
Jim Harrison
by Jim Harrison
2020
A focused poetry volume gathering Jim Harrison's ghazals, a form built on repeating lines and sudden turns. The poems move between desire, hunger, and the wild, using the form's music to sharpen his plain talk.
The Search for the Genuine: Nonfiction, 1970-2015
by Jim Harrison
2022
A large selection of Harrison's nonfiction, bringing together essays on food, travel, fishing and hunting, and books. It reads like a long conversation with an opinionated, funny guide who keeps changing his mind in public.
Conversations with Jimmy Carter
by Jim Harrison
2023
Interviews with Jimmy Carter spanning their career, focused on key books, influences, and craft. A quick, candid way to hear the author in their own words.
Where to start with Jim Harrison
If you want the famous novellas: Legends of the Fall → The Woman Lit by Fireflies → The Ancient Minstrel
If you prefer big, character-driven novels: Dalva → The Road Home → True North → Returning to Earth
If you like a cranky detective noir: Great Leader → The Big Seven
If you want essays about food and the outdoors: The Raw and the Cooked → A Really Big Lunch → The Search for the Genuine: Nonfiction, 1970-2015
If you want poems first: In Search of Small Gods → The Theory and Practice of Rivers and New Poems → Dead Man's Float
Jim Harrison sub-series and character series
Dalva books in order
Explore this seriesDetective Sunderson books in order
Explore this seriesTrue North books in order
Explore this seriesJim Harrison collections, short stories, and related book types
Short Stories/Novellas
Poetry Books

Plain Song
by Jim Harrison
1965
Locations
by Jim Harrison
1968
Outlyer and Ghazals
by Jim Harrison
1971
Letters to Yesenin
by Jim Harrison
1973
Natural World
by Jim Harrison
1982
Selected & New Poems, 1961-1981
by Jim Harrison
1982
The Theory and Practice of Rivers and New Poems
by Jim Harrison
1990
After Ikkyu and Other Poems
by Jim Harrison
1996
The Shape of the Journey
by Jim Harrison
1998
Braided Creek
by Jim Harrison
2003
Saving Daylight
by Jim Harrison
2006
In Search of Small Gods
by Jim Harrison
2009
Songs of Unreason
by Jim Harrison
2011
Darkness Sticks to Everything: Collected and New Poems
by Jim Harrison
2013
Dead Man's Float
by Jim Harrison
2015
Jim Harrison
by Jim Harrison
2019The Essential Poems
Jim Harrison
by Jim Harrison
2020Collected Ghazals
Non-Fiction Books
Literary Conversations Books

Conversations with Jorge Luis Borges
by Jim Harrison
1969
Conversations with Czeslaw Milosz
by Jim Harrison
1981
Conversations with Graham Greene
by Jim Harrison
1983
Conversations with Eudora Welty
by Jim Harrison
1985
Conversations with Walker Percy
by Jim Harrison
1985
Conversations With Isaac Bashevis Singer
by Jim Harrison
1985
Conversations with William Styron
by Jim Harrison
1985
Conversations with Malcolm Cowley
by Jim Harrison
1986
Conversations with Lillian Hellman
by Jim Harrison
1986
Conversations with Tennessee Williams
by Jim Harrison
1986
Conversations with Ernest Hemingway
by Jim Harrison
1986
Conversations with Katherine Anne Porter
by Jim Harrison
1987
Truman Capote: Conversations
by Jim Harrison
1987
Conversations with Flannery O'Connor
by Jim Harrison
1987
Conversations with Peter Taylor
by Jim Harrison
1987
Conversations with Arthur Miller
by Jim Harrison
1987
Conversations with Kurt Vonnegut
by Jim Harrison
1988
Conversations with Edward Albee
by Jim Harrison
1988
Conversations with Erskine Caldwell
by Jim Harrison
1988
Conversations with Norman Mailer
by Jim Harrison
1988
Conversations with Robert Graves
by Jim Harrison
1989
Conversations with Joyce Carol Oates
by Jim Harrison
1989
Conversations with Shelby Foote
by Jim Harrison
1989
Conversations with Robertson Davies
by Jim Harrison
1989
Conversations with James Baldwin
by Jim Harrison
1989
Conversations with John Gardner
by Jim Harrison
1990
Conversations with Richard Wilbur
by Jim Harrison
1990
Conversations with Tom Wolfe
by Jim Harrison
1990
Conversations with Raymond Carver
by Jim Harrison
1990
Conversations with Eugene O'Neill
by Jim Harrison
1990
Conversations with Reynolds Price
by Jim Harrison
1991
Conversations with Bernard Malamud
by Jim Harrison
1991
Conversations with Elizabeth Spencer
by Jim Harrison
1991
Conversations with Nikki Giovanni
by Jim Harrison
1992
Conversations With Thornton Wilder
by Jim Harrison
1992
Conversations with Robert Coles
by Jim Harrison
1992
Conversations with M. F. K. Fisher
by Jim Harrison
1992
More Conversations with Walker Percy
by Jim Harrison
1993
Conversations with Richard Wright
by Jim Harrison
1993
Conversations with Paul Bowles
by Jim Harrison
1993
Conversations with Louise Erdrich and Michael Dorris
by Louise Erdrich & Jim Harrison
1994
Conversations with Amiri Baraka
by Jim Harrison
1994
Conversations with Toni Morrison
by Jim Harrison
1994
Conversations with Saul Bellow
by Jim Harrison
1994
Conversations with Henry Miller
by Jim Harrison
1994
Conversations with Ernest Gaines
by Jim Harrison
1995
Conversations with Ralph Ellison
by Jim Harrison
1995
Conversations with Chester Himes
by Jim Harrison
1995
Conversations with Susan Sontag
by Jim Harrison
1995
Conversations with Ishmael Reed
by Jim Harrison
1995
Conversations with Derek Walcott
by Jim Harrison
1996
More Conversations with Eudora Welty
by Jim Harrison
1996
Conversations with Elizabeth Bishop
by Jim Harrison
1996
Conversations with Pauline Kael
by Jim Harrison
1996
Conversations with V. S. Naipaul
by Jim Harrison
1997
Conversations with N. Scott Momaday
by Jim Harrison
1997
Conversations with Chinua Achebe
by Jim Harrison
1997
Conversations with Maxine Hong Kingston
by Jim Harrison
1998
Conversations with Denise Levertov
by Jim Harrison
1998
Conversations With William Faulkner
by Jim Harrison
1999
Conversations with E. L. Doctorow
by Jim Harrison
1999
Conversations With John Fowles
by Jim Harrison
1999
Conversations with Salman Rushdie
by Jim Harrison
2000
Conversations with William S. Burroughs
by Jim Harrison
2000
Conversations with Leslie Marmon Silko
by Jim Harrison
2000
Conversations with Chaim Potok
by Jim Harrison
2001
Conversations with Richard Ford
by Jim Harrison
2001
Conversations with Christopher Isherwood
by Jim Harrison
2001
Conversations with Mary Gordon
by Jim Harrison
2002
Conversations with Jim Harrison
by Jim Harrison
2002
Conversations with Clarence Major
by Jim Harrison
2002
Conversations with Margaret Walker
by Jim Harrison
2002
Conversations with Erica Jong
by Jim Harrison
2002
Elie Wiesel: Conversations
by Jim Harrison
2002
Joseph Brodsky: Conversations
by Jim Harrison
2003
Conversations with Rita Dove
by Jim Harrison
2003
Conversations with F. Scott Fitzgerald
by Jim Harrison
2003
Conversations with Gwendolyn Brooks
by Jim Harrison
2003
Conversations with Stanley Kaufmann
by Jim Harrison
2003
Conversations with Gloria Naylor
by Jim Harrison
2004
Conversations with Audre Lorde
by Jim Harrison
2004
Conversations with Ray Bradbury
by Jim Harrison
2004
Conversations with Isaac Asimov
by Jim Harrison
2005
Conversations with Don DeLillo
by Jim Harrison
2005
Conversations with Gore Vidal
by Jim Harrison
2005
Conversations with Robert Penn Warren
by Jim Harrison
2005
Conversations with Jack Kerouac
by Jim Harrison
2005
Conversations with Thomas McGuane
by Jim Harrison
2006
Conversations with Larry Brown
by Jim Harrison
2007
Conversations with Sonia Sanchez
by Jim Harrison
2007
Conversations with Leon Forrest
by Jim Harrison
2007
Conversations with Jimmy Carter
by Jim Harrison
2023
Standalone Jim Harrison books

Wolf
by Jim Harrison
1971
A Good Day to Die
by Jim Harrison
1973
Farmer
by Jim Harrison
1976
Legends of the Fall
by Jim Harrison
1979
Warlock
by Jim Harrison
1982
Sundog
by Jim Harrison
1984
The Woman Lit by Fireflies
by Jim Harrison
1990
The Beast God Forgot to Invent
by Jim Harrison
2000
The Boy Who Ran to the Woods
by Jim Harrison
2000
Conversations With John le Carré
by Jim Harrison
2004
Conversations with Gabriel García Márquez
by Jim Harrison
2005
The English Major
by Jim Harrison
2008
Brown Dog
by Jim Harrison
2013
The River Swimmer
by Jim Harrison
2013
Author bio
Jim Harrison was a Michigan-born writer who moved easily between novels, novellas, poetry, and nonfiction. Over a career that ran for decades, he published more than three dozen books and wrote with the same curiosity about people, animals, weather, and appetite. He died in 2016, but the work still feels lived-in and physical.
He was born in Grayling, Michigan, and grew up in Haslett. His father worked as a county agricultural agent, so the outdoors wasn't a weekend hobby, it was part of the family's everyday life. A childhood accident left Harrison blind in one eye, and he often wrote with an extra-fine attention to sound, taste, and touch.
In 1962, Harrison's father and sister were killed in a car accident.
The loss didn't turn him into a sentimental writer. If anything, it sharpened his sense that joy and damage can sit in the same room, sometimes in the same sentence. He studied at Michigan State University, earning a BA in 1960 and an MA in comparative literature in 1964. He married Linda King in 1959, and they had two daughters.
After a short period teaching at Stony Brook University in the mid-1960s, he committed to writing full time. A few years later, he took a bad fall while bird hunting, and a friend, Thomas McGuane, suggested he use the recovery time to try a novel. That detour helped lead to Wolf: A False Memoir.
Harrison started as a poet and kept publishing poetry all the way through his last years. Along the way he picked up major support, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, and he became known as a writer who could shift forms without changing his voice. He never treated poetry as a side project, it was the place he went to listen to his own mind.
His fiction often returns to sparsely populated parts of the Midwest and the American West, places where people can hide, or unravel, in plain sight. Novels like Dalva, Sundog, Warlock, and True North mix family history with the pull of landscape, and they don't flinch from desire, addiction, or boredom. His characters are rarely polished. They're funny, lonely, hungry, and capable of real tenderness.
For many readers, the easiest entry is the novellas. Legends of the Fall brought him a wide audience, and several of those shorter works were adapted for film, including Revenge and Legends of the Fall. He liked the pressure of the form: one hard-driving story with no wasted air.
Food mattered to him.
Essay collections like The Raw and the Cooked and A Really Big Lunch move from restaurant tables to hunting camps to arguments about books, and many of those pieces began as magazine writing. He lived for long stretches in places like Livingston, Montana, and Patagonia, Arizona, and he even showed up on Anthony Bourdain's travel show for a meal and a conversation. If you want him in his own speaking voice, Off to the Side is a good companion, and The Search for the Genuine gathers decades of his nonfiction in one place. Even with all the genres, Harrison often said poetry was at the center of his life as a writer, and he kept returning to it right up to the end.
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