HOOKSETT, N.H. (AP) - Two novelists and two former U.S. poet laureates will be the first writers inducted into the New Hampshire Literary Hall of Fame.
The New Hampshire Writers’ Project and Southern New Hampshire University created the hall of fame to honor individual writers and the state’s broad literary history.
The first four inductees will be poets Robert Frost and Donald Hall and authors Grace Metalious and John Irving.
Irving, who was born in Exeter, is known for best-sellers such as “The World According to Garp,” and “The Hotel New Hampshire.” He also won an Academy Award in 1999 for his screenplay adaption of his novel “The Cider House Rules.”
Metalious, who was born in Manchester, wrote “Peyton Place,” a novel about the dark secrets of a small town, and three other books before dying at age 39 in 1964.
Hall has authored more than 50 books, including 15 volumes of poetry. A longtime resident of Wilmot, he is a former U.S. Poet Laureate and won a Caldecott Medal for his children’s book “The Ox-Cart Man.”
Frost, also a former poet laureate, attended Dartmouth College and lived in New Hampshire for many years. He received four Pulitzer prizes for poetry and read at President John F. Kennedy’s inauguration in 1961. He died in 1963.
The hall of fame will be housed at Southern New Hampshire University’s new library in Hooksett and will display works by the inductees, including first editions and rough drafts
An induction ceremony will be held there March 28.
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