Alexander Laing (American writer)
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Alexander Kinnan Laing (August 7, 1903 – April 23, 1976) was a poet, novelist, writer and compiler of sea stories, and professor. He spent his career at Dartmouth College, where he also studied.
Laing dropped out of Dartmouth in 1925 and spent two years at sea, an experience that informed much of his later work.[1] He served on the SS Leviathan, a German-built passenger liner that had been seized by the United States in 1917.[2][3] On the Leviathan, he sailed to Southampton and, later, to Los Angeles via the Panama Canal. He retained his affection for the sea, using a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1934 to sail around the world via Europe, the Suez Canal, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, and Hawaii.[4]
After his return to Dartmouth, he won the Walt Whitman Prize for Poetry in 1929.[2] He later served in a variety of positions at the College, including Advisor to the Arts, Assistant Librarian, and Lecturer and Professor of English.[2] One of his most prominent roles was his leadership in the Dartmouth Writing Clinic, which he futilely attempted to save from elimination in 1959.[5]
Laing married three times. His first wife was Isabel Lattimore, his second, the poet Dilys Laing, with whom he had one son, David Bennet Laing. His third wife, Veronica, was the daughter of the illustrator Rudolph Ruzicka.[6] He died as the result of a bicycle accident at the age of 72.[1]
