Hans Ansgar Ostrom (born January 29, 1954) is an American professor, writer, editor, and scholar. Ostrom is a professor of African American Studies and English the
University of Puget Sound (1983–present), where he teaches courses on African-American literature, creative writing, and poetry as a genre. He is known for his authorship of various books on African-American studies and creative writing, and novels including Three to Get Ready, Honoring Juanita, and Without One, as well as The Coast Starlight: Collected Poems 1976–2006.[1]
Early life
Ostrom was born in
Sierra City, California, on January 19, 1954. Ostrom attended
Sierra Community College for two years, then transferred to
University of California, Davis, where he completed his B.A. (1977) and M.A. (1982) with a major in English. He completed his Ph.D. in English in 1982, also from University of California, Davis (UC Davis). Ostrom began teaching composition at (UC Davis in 1987, and taught American Studies and English language courses at
Gutenberg University in Germany.
In the field of African-American studies, Ostrom's academic publications include two books on
Langston Hughes – Langston Hughes: A Study of the Short Fiction and A Langston Hughes Encyclopedia – as well as the five-volume Greenwood Encyclopedia of African American Studies, co-edited with J. David Macey.
Ostrom has also published articles on the works of
Rudolph Fisher,
Elizabeth Bishop,
William Blake, and
George Meredith. Ostrom's poems and short fiction have appeared in a variety of journals and anthologies. He has published three novels: Three to Get Ready, Honoring Juanita, and Without One, as well as The Coast Starlight: Collected Poems 1976–2006.
With William Haltom, Orwell's "Politics and the English Language" in the Age of Pseudocracy, New York: Routledge/Taylor & Francis, 2018.
ISBN9781351013871
With Wendy Bishop, Colors of a Different Horse: Rethinking Creative Writing Theory and Pedagogy. Urbana: National Council of Teachers of English, 1994.
ISBN978-0814107164
With J. David Macey, Forgotten African American Firsts: An Encyclopedia of Pioneering History. Westport: Greenwood Publishers, 2023.
ISBN978-1-4408-7535-9
Greenwood Press: Greenwood Encyclopedia of African American Literature (2005), edited by Hans Ostrom and J David Macey: excerpts from multiple reviews:
http://www.greenwood.com/catalog/GR2972.aspx
ERIC abstract of Colors of a Different Horse: Rethinking Creative Writing Theory and Pedagogy, edited by Wendy Bishop and Hans Ostrom.
Law and Society in the 21st Century: conference held at Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany, July 2007.
Rita Dove, "Poet's Choice", Washington Post (column by Rita Dove), May 20, 2001, includes "Emily Dickinson and Elvis Presley in Heaven", a poem by Hans Ostrom.