Carl H. Klaus was a critically acclaimed essayist and the founder of the Nonfiction Writing Program at the University of Iowa. He is the author of My Vegetable Love, A Self Made of Words, Letters to Kate, and many other works.
Carl Hanna Klaus was born in Cleveland to Max Henry and Caroline (Epstein) Klaus. After earning his BA and MA at the University of Michigan, Carl became a doctor of English, receiving his Ph.D. from Cornell University.
Carl Klaus was foremost an American English language educator. His first position from 1959 to 1964 was at Bowdoin College in Maine. After that, he worked in the English Department at the University of Iowa.
At Iowa, he is best known as the spiritual and intellectual force behind its Nonfiction Writing Program.
Carl also was a writing consultant for the National Assessment of Educational Progress from 1972 to 1981. In 1977, he was a visiting professor at the State University of New York at Albany.
During his last years of teaching and through retirement, Carl Klaus settled into writing a series of books, eight overall. His first was My Vegetable Love (1996), and the most recent, The Ninth Decade (2021), an 8-year chronicle in 6-month essays about his life from the early-to late-80s, featuring his longtime companion Jackie, bearing witness to the challenges and pleasures of a longer-than-average lifespan.
In addition to teaching and writing, Carl's loves were organic gardening, cooking, and travel. With his first wife, Kate, it was often to Kauai, where they volunteered in habitat restoration.
Photo credit: www.carlklaus.com
