About Jon Hassler

Jon Hassler (March 30, 1933 – March 20, 2008) was an American writer and teacher known for his novels about small-town life in Minnesota. He held the positions of Regents professor emeritus and writer-in-residence at St. John's University in Collegeville, Minnesota.

  
Hassler's boyhood home in Plainview, Minnesota
Hassler was born in Minneapolis on March 30, 1933. He spent his childhood and teen years in the Minnesota towns of Staples and Plainview, where he graduated from high school. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree in English from St. John's University in 1955. While teaching English at three different Minnesota high schools, he received his Master of Arts degree in English from the University of North Dakota in 1960. He continued to teach high school until 1965, when he began his collegiate teaching career: first at Bemidji State University, then Brainerd Community College, and finally at Saint John's, where he became the writer-in-residence in 1980.

During his high-school teaching years, Hassler married and fathered three children. His first marriage lasted 25 years. He had two more marriages, the last to Gretchen Kresl Hassler.

In 1994, Hassler was diagnosed with progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), a disease similar to Parkinson's. It caused vision and speech problems, as well as difficulty walking, but he was able to continue writing. He was reported to have finished a novel just days before his death. Hassler died in 2008, at the age of 74, at Methodist Hospital in St. Louis Park, Minnesota.The Jon Hassler Theater in Plainview is named for him. In 2021, his memoir Days Like Smoke was published posthumously.