John R. Erickson
- Writer
- Music Department
- Actor
John R. Erickson was born on 20 October 1943 in Midland, Texas, USA. He is a writer and actor, known for Hank the Cowdog (2020) and CBS Storybreak (1984). He has been married to Kristine Dykema since 1967. They have three children.
Writer
Music Department
Actor
- Born
- Spouse
- Kristine Dykema1967 - present (3 children)
- TriviaJohn Richard Erickson was born in Midland, Texas, on October 20, 1943, to Joseph W. Erickson and Anna Beth Curry Erickson, the youngest of three children. In 1946, the family moved to Perryton, Texas, in the northeastern Texas Panhandle.
John started first grade in the Perryton school system and graduated from high school in the class of 1962. He has described himself as a lazy student and a reluctant reader. He ran track (high hurdles) and played varsity football, sang in the choir, played bassoon in the band and drums in the stage band, and taught himself how to play the five-string banjo. He participated in speech events (debate and extemporaneous speaking), and played lead roles in several school plays.
His talent for writing went unnoticed until his senior year in high school, when his English teacher, Annie Love, made the class write an original poem. Erickson found that it was easy for him. For the rest of the year, he stayed up late at night, writing poems for Mrs. Love.
Erickson attended the University of Denver for a year, then finished his B.A. degree at the University of Texas in Austin. For two years, he studied theology at Harvard Divinity School and left three hours short of a master's degree. At UT, he met his future wife, Kristine Dykema, and they were married in Dallas in 1967.
During the years 1974-1981, John worked as a ranch cowboy in Oklahoma and Texas. There, he found a balance between hard physical work and the intense, concentrated effort of writing four hours every day. He wrote novels, short stories, articles, plays, essays, and book reviews. When he sent them off to publishers, most came back with rejection slips.
In 1982, after fifteen years of failure and frustration, he and Kris started their own publishing company, Maverick Books, in their garage in Perryton, and brought out the first Hank the Cowdog book in 1983.
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