| Ronald Verlin Cassill | |
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| Born | May 17, 1919 Cedar Falls, Iowa |
| Died | March 25, 2002 (aged 82) Providence, Rhode Island |
| Occupation | novelist, short story writer, editor, painter, lithographer |
| Nationality | United States |
| Genres | Fiction |
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Ronald Verlin Cassill, usually called R. V. Cassill, (May 17, 1919 – March 25, 2002) was a prolific American novelist, short story writer, reviewer, editor, painter, and lithographer.
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Born in 1919 in Cedar Falls, Iowa, Cassill earned a B.A. in art at The University of Iowa in 1939 where he was a member of the Phi Beta Kappa Society. He also earned his M.A. at Iowa in 1947. Between earning his B.A. and M.A., Cassill served in the United States Army, from 1942 to 1946 where he served in the south Pacific and attained the rank of Lieutenant. He briefly served as an instructor at The University of Iowa before attending the Sorbonne for a year as a Fulbright Fellow beginning in 1952. Cassill worked as an editor for the Western Review of Iowa City from 1951 to 1952, Collier's Encyclopedia from 1953 to 1954, and Dude and Gent in 1958.
Cassill became a lecturer at both Columbia University and the New School for Social Research in 1957 until he returned to the University of Iowa in the same capacity in 1960 where he would teach for a few years at the Iowa Writer's Workshop. Among some of the students who took classes with Cassill at the Iowa Writer's Workshop during this time, and would later go on to achieve some measure of acclaim, included Clark Blaise, Raymond Carver, and Joy Williams. His next position was as writer-in-residence at Purdue University from 1965 to 1966. Cassill was appointed Associate Professor at Brown University in 1966 and then to Professor of English in 1972 where he remained until his retired from teaching as Professor emeritus in 1983. In addition to his teaching Cassill served as U.S. Information Service lecturer in Europe from 1975 to 1976. Cassill was also a painter and lithographer, mounting exhibitions in Chicago in 1946 and 1948 as well as in New York in 1970.
Cassill's papers are archived at the Mugar Memorial Library at Boston University.
In 1995 the American Academy of Arts and Letters awarded Cassill the Academy Award for Literature. Cassill received the Atlantic Monthly's "Firsts" prize for a short story in 1947. He was given a Rockefeller grant in 1954 and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1968.
Cassill's extremely prolific career and wide array of interests make it difficult to summarize the thematic nature and concerns of his work. His stories and novels concern bucolic life in the midwest, the life of the artist or academic, and at times extend into autobiography. A preoccupation with the fates of couples, in alienation and union, is exhibited in much of his fiction, as is the warring of emotional and rational impulses in individuals and pairs. A strong visual identification is intrinsic in his prose, likely due to his training as a visual artist. His most famous novels were Doctor Cobb's Game and Clem Anderson but the sheer breadth of his writing and his pervasive influence as a teacher have secured Cassill's legacy in modern fiction.