Ed McClanahan was an American novelist, essayist, and professor. Edward Poage McClanahan was born in Brooksville, Kentucky in 1932 to Edward Leroy and Jesse (Poage) McClanahan. He attended school there and later in nearby Maysville, Kentucky where the family relocated in 1948. McClanahan graduated from Miami University with a B.A. in English in 1955. He briefly attended Stanford University's graduate English program during the 1955-1956 academic year, where he studied under Richard Scowcroft and Malcolm Cowley; after failing to acclimate to the program, he received an M.A. in English from the University of Kentucky in 1958. From 1958 to 1962, McClanahan taught first-year composition and a creative writing course previously taught by Bernard Malamud as an instructor at Oregon State University.
