Stephen Harrigan

Stephen Harrigan is an American writer, known primarily for his 2000 historical novel The Gates of the Alamo.

Life

He was born in Oklahoma City in 1948, grew up in Texas (in Abilene and Corpus Christi) and currently lives in Austin. Harrigan began his career as a journalist, as a staff writer and later senior editor at Texas Monthly magazine. The Gates of the Alamo was a New York Times bestseller and the recipient of several awards, including a Spur Award from the Western Writers of America. Harrigan has written three other novels and three books of non-fiction. His most recent novel was Challenger Park, published by Alfred A. Knopf in 2006. Writing in the New York Times Book Review, Thomas Mallon called Challenger Park “a fine, absorbing achievement, probably the best science-factual novel about the space-faring worlds of Houston and Cape Canaveral in the nearly half-century since the first astronauts were chosen.”

Stephen Harrigan has also been a prolific screenwriter, principally in the field of made-for-television movies. Among the films he has written are The Last of His Tribe (HBO), Beyond the Prairie: The True Story of Laura Ingalls Wilder (CBS), King of Texas (TNT) and The Colt (The Hallmark Channel.) More recently he worked with Robert Altman on a feature version of S. R. Bindler’s documentary, Hands on a Hard Body, about an endurance contest to win a pickup truck. Altman was in pre-production on the movie at the time of his death in November 2006.