Background
Clinton Foster Larson (1919-1994) was born on September 22, 1919 and grew up in Salt Lake
City, Utah. In 1942 he married Naomi Barlow in the Salt Lake Temple and served in the Army
Air Corps during the Second World War. He received his bachelor's and master's degrees from
the University of Utah (1948) and a doctorate in English from the University of Denver. In
1947, Dr. Larson joined the faculty at Brigham Young University where he served as a
professor of creative writing for the English department. After teaching for 27 years, he
was appointed BYU's first poet in residence; Larson retired in 1985. He was a prolific poet
and playwright who wrote hundreds of poems throughout his career. He was well known for his
work in producing a multi-volume illustrated children's version of the Book of Mormon and
for his devotion to portraying the Mormon theme and bringing gospel principles to light
through his writings.William Edgar Stafford (1914-1993) was born in Hutchinson, Kansas in 1914. He earned his
bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Kansas and a doctorate in English
from the University of Iowa. He was a professor of English at Lewis and Clark College in
Portland, Oregon, was Poet Laureate for the state of Oregon from 1975 to 1993, and served as
a poet in residence of the Library of Congress in 1970. In 1963, Stafford received the
National Book Award for Poetry for his first collection of poems, "Traveling Through the
Dark." He died in Lake Oswego, Oregon, on August 28, 1993.
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