# Timothy Egan

Timothy P. Egan (born November 8, 1954) is an American author, journalist, and former op-ed columnist for The New York Times. Egan has written ten books. Egan, a third-generation Westerner, lives in Seattle.
His first book, The Good Rain, won the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award in 1991. For The Worst Hard Time, a 2006 book about people who lived through the Great Depression's Dust Bowl, he won the National Book Award for Nonfiction and the Washington State Book Award in History/Biography. His book on the photographer Edward Curtis, Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher, won the 2013 Carnegie Medal for Excellence for nonfiction. The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America (2009) is about the Great Fire of 1910, which burned about three million acres (12,000 km$^2$) and helped shape the United States Forest Service. The book describes some of the political issues facing Theodore Roosevelt. For this work he won a second Washington State Book Award in History/Biography and a second Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award.
In 2001, The New York Times won a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for a series to which Egan contributed, "How Race is Lived in America".
In 2023 his book about how the rape and murder of Madge Oberholtzer helped undo the rising KKK tide in the U.S.

## Awards and honors

* 1991 Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award, The Good Rain
* 2001 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting, "How Race is Lived in America" (contributor)
* 2006 National Book Award for Nonfiction, The Worst Hard Time
* 2006 Washington State Book Award in History/Biography, The Worst Hard Time
* 2010 Washington State Book Award in History/Biography, The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America
* 2010 Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award, The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America
* 2013 Chautauqua Prize, winner, Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher
* 2013 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction, winner, Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher
* 2024 Notable Book. American Library Association, A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them.

## Writings

* Egan, Timothy (1990). The Good Rain. Knopf. ISBN 0-394-57724-8.
* Egan, Timothy (1992). Breaking Blue. Knopf. ISBN 0-394-58819-3.
* Egan, Timothy (1998). Lasso the Wind. Knopf. ISBN 0-375-40024-9.
* Egan, Timothy (2004). The Winemaker's Daughter. Knopf. ISBN 1-4000-4099-X.
* The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 2006. ISBN 978-0-618-77347-3.
* Egan, Timothy (2009). The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. ISBN 978-0-618-96841-1.
* Egan, Timothy (2012). Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher: The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. ISBN 978-0-618-96902-9.
* The Immortal Irishman: The Irish Revolutionary Who Became an American Hero. 2016. ISBN 9780544272880
* Egan, Timothy (2019). A Pilgrimage to Eternity: From Canterbury to Rome in Search of a Faith. Penguin. ISBN 978-0735225237.
* Egan, Timothy (2023). A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them. Penguin. ISBN 978-0735225268.