Paul Alexander Bartlett was a writer and artist, born in Moberly,
Missouri, and educated at Oberlin College, the University of Arizona,
the Academia de San Carlos in Mexico City, and the Instituto de Bellas
Artes in Guadalajara. His work can be divided into three categories: He
is the author of many novels, short stories, and poems; second, as a
fine artist, his drawings, illustrations, and paintings have been
exhibited in more than 40 one-man shows in leading galleries, including
the Los Angeles County Museum, the Atlanta Art Museum, the Bancroft
Library, the Richmond Art Institute, the Brooks Museum, the
Instituto-Mexicano-Norteamericano in Mexico City, and many other
galleries; and, third, he devoted much of his life to the most
comprehensive study of the haciendas of Mexico that has been undertaken.
350 of his pen-and-ink illustrations of the haciendas and more than
1,000 hacienda photographs make up the Paul Alexander Bartlett
Collection held by the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection of
the University of Texas, and form part of a second diversified
collection held by the American Heritage Center of the University of
Wyoming, which also includes an archive of Bartlett's literary work,
fine art, and letters. A third archive consisting primarily of
Bartlett's literary work is held by the Department of Special
Collections at UCLA.
Paul Alexander Bartlett's fiction has been commended by many authors,
among them Pearl Buck, Ford Madox Ford, John Dos Passos, James
Michener, Upton Sinclair, Evelyn Eaton, and many others. He was the
recipient of many grants, awards, and fellowships, from such
organizations as the Leopold Schepp Foundation, the Edward MacDowell
Association, the New School for Social Research, the Huntington
Hartford Foundation, the Montalvo Foundation, Yaddo, and the Carnegie
Foundation.
His wife, Elizabeth Bartlett, a widely published and internationally
commended poet, is the author of seventeen published books of poetry,
numerous poems, short stories, and essays in leading literary
quarterlies and anthologies, and, as the founder of Literary Olympics,
Inc., is the editor of a series of multi-language volumes of
international poetry that honor the work of outstanding contemporary
poets.
Their only child (me) inherited their writer's gene and has published a
number of books and articles in the fields of philosophy and psychology.
. . .
See the following page for the map of the Hacienda de Petaca, where
_When the Owl Cries_ takes place.
[Illustration: _Plan of the Hacienda Petaca, Colima, Mexico_]