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Alan Kent Haruf (/hɛrɪf/, rhymes with sheriff;[2] February 24, 1943 – November 30, 2014) was an American writer born and raised in Colorado. He wrote six novels and several short stories set on the High Plains, mostly in the fictional town of Holt.

After completing his undergraduate degree in English at Nebraska Wesleyan, Haruf enrolled in the Peace Corps and performed work in lieu of military service before receiving a master's degree from the University of Iowa. He initially struggled to establish a career as a writer; in addition to stints as a janitor, construction worker and farmhand, Haruf spent years teaching English at a high school in Wisconsin and at universities in Nebraska and Illinois. His writing was first published in 1984 when he was 41. Although Haruf's first two novels received critical praise, commercial success eluded him until the publication of Plainsong in 1999, which became a bestseller. He followed it up with Eventide (2005), a direct sequel to Plainsong, and Benediction (2013).

Throughout Haruf's career, critics praised his spare and elegant prose, authentic portrayals of rural life, and attention to the beauty found in ordinary things, although he was occasionally criticized for redundancy. In early 2014, Haruf was diagnosed with an incurable lung disease. He wrote his final book, Our Souls At Night, while ill and died that November. The book was published posthumously and adapted into a film of the same name. A Colorado magazine, 5280, wrote that Haruf is "widely considered Colorado's finest novelist", and the Dublin Review of Books called his work "both uniquely American and profoundly universal".[3][4]