Happy Birthday, Brian Doyle

Born November 6, 1956, New York, NY | Died May 2017, Lake Oswego, OR

Today, the Best American Essays newsletter celebrates essayist, novelist, poet, and longtime Portland Magazine editor Brian Doyle on the sixty-eighth anniversary of his birth. Doyle described himself as a “story catcher,” and is best known for his exuberant exploration of the wonders of the world. In 2008, he received an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature. His work has been reprinted seven times in The Best American Essays series and listed as Notable twelve times.

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Brian Doyle reading “Playfulnessness—A Note” at Welcome Table Press’s first symposium on the essay, Fordham University, New York City, 2010, photo by Heather Simons.

“Love is the story and the prayer that matters the most.”

Brian Doyle at Wabash College, 2013, unknown photographer.

“Is this why we write and read, in the end, in order to find new words for the things we feel but do not have words for?”

Credo: Essays on Grace, Altar Boys, Bees, Kneeling, Saints, the Mass, Priests, Strong Women, Epiphanies, A Wake, and the Haunting Thin Energetic Dusty Figure of Jesus the Christ (1999) explores Catholicism from a baby-boomer’s point of view. Leaping: Revelations and Epiphanies (2003) explores and celebrates the mystery of life. In The Wet Engine: Exploring the Wild Miracle of the Heart (2005; rpt. 2012), Doyle’s narrator is a father responding to his infant son’s heart surgery by examining all the wonders of the heart as an organ. One Long River of Song: Notes on Wonder (2019) collects, posthumously, Doyle’s last essays.

First nonfiction book: 

with his father, Jim Doyle, Two Voices: A Father and Son Discuss Family and Faith (Liguori Publications, 1996).

Select nonfiction bibliography:

• Sweet Dreams, Story Catcher: A Commemorative Collection of Portland Magazine Essays by Brian Doyle, University of Portland, 2018.

• “How Did You Become a Writer?” American Scholar, August 2013.

• “Playfulnessness—A Note,” Welcome Table Press, 2010.

• Jeffrey Munro, “An introduction to the brave, joyful, and prolific work of Brian Doyle,” U.S. Catholic, 2020.

• Patrick Madden, “An Essay Lover’s Guide to Brian Doyle,” Fourth Genre, Fall 2018.

Essays by Brian Doyle reprinted (R) in The Best American Essays or listed in Notables (N):

• “Sam and Louis,” The Georgia Review, 2014 (BAE 2015, N).

• “Dawn and Mary,” The Sun, 2013 (BAE 2014, N).

• “His Last Game,” Notre Dame Magazine, 2012 (BAE 2013, R).

• “The Creature Beyond the Mountains,” Orion, 2011 (BAE 2012, N).

• “Go-o-o-o, Lemmings!” American Scholar, 2010 (BAE 2011, N). 

• “Irreconcilable Dissonance,” Oregon Humanities, 2009 (BAE 2010, R).

• “The Greatest Nature Essay Ever,” Orion, 2008 (BAE 2009, R).

• “The Knock,” Portland, 2007 (BAE 2008, N).

• “Fishering,” Ecotone, 2006 (BAE 2007, N). 

• “Joyas Voladoras,” The American Scholar, 2004 (BAE 2005, R).

• “Yes,” The Georgia Review, 2002 (BAE 2003, R).

• “Notes on the Poem,” Natural Bridge, 2001 (BAE 2002, N).

• “Filled with Grace,” Notre Dame Magazine, 1999 (BAE 2000, N). 

• “The Meteorites,” The American Scholar, 1998 (BAE 1999, R).

• “Altar Boy,” The American Scholar, 1997 (BAE 1998, R).

• “Foxtail,” Notre Dame Magazine, 1996 (BAE 1997, N).

• “Ashes to Ashes, Rust to Rust,” Notre Dame Magazine (BAE 1996, N).

• “Billy Blake’s Trial,” American Scholar, 1994 (BAE 1995, N).

• “Letterature,” Portland, 1992 (BAE 1993, N).

See also:

Read: Margaret Renkl, “Brian Doyle Noticed the Little Things. His Book Reminds Us We Should Too,” New York Times, 2019. Review of Doyle’s posthumously published collection of essays, One Long River of Song: Notes on Wonder (Little Brown and Company, 2019).

Watch: Highlights of Brian Doyle Public Talks, curated 2018.

Watch: Brian Doyle Book Reading at Monmouth Public Library, Western Oregon University, 2016.

Watch: An Evening With Brian Doyle: The Fitful Genius of the Human Heart, Boston College Magazine, 2015.

Watch: Brian Doyle, Stanley P. Stone Distinguished Lecture, Boston University, 2009.