Chris Crowe
Chris Crowe is an English professor and award-winning author. He is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Crowe was born in Illinois and is one of four sons. Crowe lived in New Mexico and California until after seventh grade, and then his family moved to Tempe, Arizona. He played football and basketball and ran track during high school. He earned a football scholarship to Brigham Young University. His family focused on sports, but he credits his wife and her family, gifted artists and writers, for his pursuit of writing.
Crowe earned his BA in English from BYU and his master’s and EdD in English education from Arizona State University.
He taught high school English and coached football and track at McClintock High (his alma mater) for ten years. He worked a summer job as a writer for The Arizona Golfer, and the next summer he started writing a humor column for The Latter Day Sentinel. He also sold a few freelance magazine articles.
Since then he has published hundreds of articles, a handful of short stories, a few poems, and fourteen books, including, Death Coming Up the Hill (2014), Just as Good: How Larry Doby Changed America’s Game (2012), Thurgood Marshall: Up Close (2008), Two Roads (2007), Getting Away with Murder: The True Story of the Emmett Till Case (2003), Mississippi Trial, 1955 (2002), and Presenting Mildred D. Taylor (1999).
He was recognized for Mississippi Trial with the International Reading Association Children’s Book Award in the Young Adult Fiction category, Best Book for Young Adults by the American Library Association. Emmett Till was a Jane Addams Honor book.
Crowe was a professor at Himeji Dokkyo University and BYU–Hawaii. He became a professor of English and English education at Brigham Young University in 1993. He specializes in young adult literature.
In 2007, Crowe was awarded the Karl G. Maeser Excellence in Research and Creative Arts Award from BYU and in 2008 was awarded the Nan Osmond Grass Professorship in English. In November 2010, he received the Ted Hipple Service Award from the Assembly on Literature for Adolescents of the National Council of Teachers of English.
Crowe married his high school sweetheart, Elizabeth, and they are the parents of four children and several grandchildren. They live in Provo, Utah.
