This Goodly Land

Roy Hoffman (June 23, 1953–present)

Alabama Connections

• Mobile, Mobile County: birthplace, childhood residence, adult residence
• Fairhope, Baldwin County: adult residence

Selected Works

• Hoffman, Roy. Almost Family. New York: Dial Press, 1983. Rpt. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2000.
• Hoffman, Roy. Back Home: Journeys Through Mobile. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2001.
• Hoffman, Roy. Chicken Dreaming Corn: A Novel. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2004.

Literary Awards

• Lillian Smith Book Award, Southern Regional Council, 1983, for Almost Family
• Alabama Author Award, Alabama Library Association, 1984, for Almost Family

Biographical Information

Roy Hoffman was born and grew up in Mobile, Ala. He began writing as a teenager and contributed to his high school literary magazine. Hoffman attended Tulane University, where he wrote for the college newspaper and began keeping a journal. After earning his baccalaureate degree in English in 1975, Hoffman moved to New York, living in Manhattan and Brooklyn for the next twenty years. He worked for New York Magazine, wrote grant proposals for the WNET-13 public television station, and worked for then-Governor Mario M. Cuomo. He also taught writing workshops and wrote freelance articles and book reviews. His first book, Almost Family, was published in 1983. Hoffman returned to Mobile in 1996 to become “writer-in-residence” for the Mobile Press-Register. Since his return, he has published a collection of essays and a second novel. Hoffman and his family live in Fairhope.

Interests and Themes

Roy Hoffman’s fiction is based on his family and on the Southern Jewish experience. His novel Chicken Dreaming Corn is a fictional version of the story of his Romanian immigrant grandparents and is set in Mobile. Back Home is a collection of nonfiction essays about southern Alabama.

For More Information

Please check your local library for these materials. If items are not available locally, your librarian can help you borrow them through the InterLibrary Loan program. Your librarian can also help you find other information about this author.

There may be more information available through the databases in the Alabama Virtual Library. If you are an Alabama citizen, AVL can be used at your public library or school library media center. You can also get a username and password from your librarian to use AVL at home.

Reference Articles

• Larson, Susan. "Feels Like Home: Roy Hoffman's Writing Evokes the Lives of Jewish Southerners". New Orleans Times-Picayune 24 Oct. 2004: Living, 1.

Reference Web Sites

• Kingsbury, Pam. "Mazel Tov Y'all! The South As a Melting Pot: An Interview with Roy Hoffman". Southern Scribe: Our Culture of Storytelling. 2003. http://www.southernscribe.com/zine/authors/Hoffman_Roy.htm.

Photo by John Sledge; courtesy of University of Georgia Press.

Last updated on May 30, 2008.