Norman Lavers (1935–2026)

Norman Lavers was an award-winning author of several books and short stories, an English and creative writing professor at Arkansas State University (ASU) in Jonesboro (Craighead County), an avid nature instructor/photographer/blogger, and winner of Arkansas’s annual Porter Prize.

Norman Cecil Lavers was born in Berkeley, California, on April 21, 1935, to attorney Cecil Lavers and homemaker Mary Parker Lavers. He had two sisters. When Lavers was nine years old, he won first prize from the Young Author’s Club for a story published in the Berkeley Daily Gazette. His major influence for writing came from his grandfather, who was a successful short-story writer. Later in life, Lavers would write Growing Up in Berkeley with the Bomb (Summer House Books, 1998). The book is composed of essays written about his childhood during the 1940s and 1950s.

Lavers graduated from Berkeley High School and joined the Army, studying Mandarin Chinese before being sent to an outpost along the South Korean border. He went on to attend San Francisco State University in San Francisco, California, where he received a BA (1959) and an MA (1963) in English literature. He taught for a while at Northern Illinois University and spent a year traveling through Europe and Morocco. He continued his education at the University of Iowa (1966–1969) and received a fiction fellowship from the university’s writers’ workshop (the first creative-writing program in the country) while earning his PhD in English literature and creative writing.

Before arriving at ASU, he taught English at Western Washington State College (now Western Washington University) in Bellingham, Washington, from 1970 to 1976. Lavers taught at ASU from August 1976 until his retirement in 2000. He and his colleague Richard McGhee (then director of Arts and Science at ASU) brought the Kansas Quarterly, an international literary magazine, to the university. They changed the name to the Arkansas Review, and Lavers served as the first editor.

Lavers had several short stories published in the North American Review, the first literary magazine in the United States, and in the Missouri Review, Kansas Quarterly, North Country Anvil, Ohio Review, Western Humanities Review, and other magazines and anthologies. Lavers published his first novel, The Northwest Passage (Fiction Collective), in 1984; in this novel, “the journals of a member of an eighteenth-century expedition in search of the Northwest Passage are edited by a twentieth-century teacher and a scholar in the distant future.” Other books written by Lavers included Mark Harris (Twayne Publishers, 1978), Jerzy Kosinski (Twayne Publishers, 1982), and Pop Culture Into Art: The Novels of Manuel Puig (University of Missouri Press, 1988). He was also the author of two e-books: The White Robin (2011) and The Telegraph Relay Station: A Collection of Short Stories (2011).

While traveling through the United Kingdom, Lavers met Cheryl Dicks of Porthcawl, South Wales, whom he married in 1967. They had one son, Gawain. Their combined interest in nature led to their contribution of articles and photographs to Birdwatcher’s Digest. Together, they directed workshops on natural history for adults interested in insect ecology. The workshops, which were open to the public, were sponsored by the Arkansas Audubon Society (AAS) and other organizations. They continued to photograph and study nature in northeastern Arkansas, specifically the Crowley’s Ridge and Delta areas.

Lavers was the author of an illustrated field guide, “The Robber Flies of Crowley’s Ridge, Arkansas” (2007). Lavers wrote, “Although our focus of study is a small area of northeastern Arkansas, in fact the majority of species here are found throughout Arkansas.” As far as he knew, it was “the first attempt by anyone to create a guide to the identification of Robber Flies in the field.” The intention of the guide was not only for identification purposes but “to make you aware of those fearless and fascinating predators that are all around you.” Joining other volunteers, Lavers participated in the 2005–2006 search for the endangered and possibly extinct ivory-billed woodpecker at the Cache River National Wildlife Refuge.

In 2018, he and his wife published 100 Insects of Arkansas and the Midsouth. Shortly after that, they moved to Tucson, Arizona, to be close to their son

Lavers received support from the National Endowment for the Arts (1982) and has received a Fulbright Award to teach in Thailand (1985) and the O. Henry Award (1987) for his short story “Big Dog,” which was initially published in the North American Review. He also received the Pushcart Prize. The Porter Prize was awarded to Lavers in 1995. It is a prize given annually to an Arkansas writer “who has accomplished a substantial and impressive body of work that merits enhanced recognition.”

Lavers died on June 8, 2026, in Tucson.

For additional information:
Lavers, Norman. Growing Up in Berkeley with the Bomb. Alpine, WY: Summer House Books, 1998.

Martin, Philip. “A Curious Life.” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, July 26, 2026, pp. 1H, 6H. Online at https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2026/jul/26/remembering-norman-lavers-a-curious-life-of/ (accessed July 26, 2026).

Obituary of Norman Cecil Lavers. Avenidas Cremation and Burial. https://www.avenidascremation.com/obituaries/norman-lavers (accessed July 26, 2026).

Sweating the Small Stuff. http://normanlavers.blogspot.com/ (accessed February 9, 2026).

T. French Adams
Jonesboro, Arkansas