MEDIA CONTACT: Wendy Leopold at 847-491-4890 or w-leopold@northwestern.edu

April 12, 2005

Saul Bellow's First Published Story Won Third Place in Student Contest

EVANSTON, Ill. --- Despite what you may have read to the contrary, the late Saul Bellow’s first published work of fiction appeared in the Daily Northwestern on Feb. 19, 1936. Titled “The Hell It Can’t,” the Nobel Prize winner’s story won third place in a 1935 student literary contest at judged by three Northwestern University professors.

A second story by the late legendary Chicago writer called “Pets of the North Shore” was published in the Northwestern University student newspaper on April 1, 1936. Bellow died Tuesday, April 5, at his home in Brookline, Mass.

A 1937 Northwestern graduate, Bellow left the University of Chicago to study anthropology with the legendary anthropologist Melville Herskovits, founder of Northwestern’s world renowned Program of African Studies.

Considered one of the great writers in American literary history, Bellow published more than 20 novels, novellas and short stories. He received both the Pulitzer Prize and Nobel Prize for Literature in 1976. He was awarded an honorary doctor of literature degree from Northwestern in 1962.

Copies of the Daily Northwestern with Bellow’s early short story efforts are in the Archives of Northwestern University Library. For further information, call (847) 491-3354.