Catherine Ryan Hyde (born 1955) is an American novelist and short story writer, with more recent forays and notable success in transitioning from traditional publication towards the world of eBook publication. Her novels have enjoyed bestseller status in both the U.S. and U.K., and her short stories have won many awards and honors. Her book Pay It Forward, was later adapted into a film of the same name and her novel Electric God is currently in development.
Many of Hyde's literary works are generally optimistic explorations of ordinary people, characters who are troubled or down-on-their-luck or recovering from past difficulties or abuse. Many feature journeys that parallel some of her own travels, life in New York City, small towns, and 'cross country' travels and explore settings often in those areas and the American West and Southwest. Hyde's Young writings and activities deal issues such as alcoholism, (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) concerns, social service difficulties, etc.
Early life
Catherine Ryan Hyde was born in a family of writers, and lived during her early life in the Buffalo, New York area, and briefly lived in New York City, an influence which often recurs in her writing in the form of being a setting for part of or the whole story arc. She attributes her changeover from "the last kid picked" on the team towards becoming a writer to a favorite teacher, Lenny Horowitz, who later died of liver cancer. After an accelerated graduation from high school at the age of 17, Hyde worked many jobs such as being a dog trainer, a tour guide at Hearst Castle, and working in a bakery prior to dedicating herself to become a full-time writer in the early 1980s.
After relocating cross country to the Los Angeles area, she currently lives and writes and blogs from her home and areas around Cambria, California.
Early writing career: short stories and novels
Early successes came from writing short stories, at one point racking up more than 122 rejections before being first published, and since then a total of more than 1500 rejections resulting in about 50 published stories.
During this time, Hyde also wrote her first novel(s) Walter's Purple Heart, her first published Novel Funeral for Horses, and an anthology of 18 short stories, Earthquake Weather. A self-described literary writer, her breakthrough novel Pay It Forward was released in 1999 (Pocket Books) and quickly became a national bestseller, and was later adapted into the film Pay It Forward (Warner Brothers), which was released in 2000.
Pay It Forward
According to published interviews, the genesis of the idea for the novel came when Hyde's car caught fire in what she described as the "bad neighborhood" in which she lived, and two total strangers came to her assistance, then left before she could even thank them.
Since then Pay It Forward, has been translated into twenty languages for publication in more than thirty countries, and was chosen among the Best Books for Young Adults in 2001 by the American Library Association and continues to be among her most popular and requested works. The movie Pay It Forward (Warner Brothers) was released theatrically in 2000, starring Kevin Spacey, Helen Hunt and Haley Joel Osment.
Pay It Forward, Young Reader's Edition was released on August 19, 2014. The new version tells the same story but was extensively revised to be more complementary to lesson plans, summer reading lists, etc. for students at a middle school grade level, that is, for students at approximately the same age and maturity level as the novel's main protagonist, Trevor McKinney.
Other short stories and writings
Her work has appeared in The Antioch Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Sun, Ploughshares, and Glimmer Train. Two of her stories have been honored in the Raymond Carver Short Story Contest. She received second place in the 1998 Bellingham Review Tobias Wolff Award for Fiction. Nearly a dozen of her stories have been nominated for Best American Short Stories, The O'Henry Award, and The Pushcart Prize.
