Joe Haldeman - Life

Life

Haldeman was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. His family traveled and he lived in Puerto Rico, New Orleans, Washington, D.C., Bethesda, Maryland and Anchorage, Alaska as a child. Haldeman married Mary Gay Potter, known as "Gay", in 1965. He received a BS degree in Physics and Astronomy from the University of Maryland in 1967. That same year he was drafted into the Army and served as a combat engineer in Vietnam. He was wounded in combat and his wartime experience was the inspiration for War Year, his first novel; also later books such as "The Hemingway Hoax" and "Old Twentieth" deal extensively with the experience of combat soldiers in Vietnam and other wars. In 1975, he received an MFA degree in Creative Writing from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. He resides in Gainesville, Florida and Cambridge, Massachusetts and teaches writing at MIT. In addition to being an award-winning writer, Haldeman is a painter. In 2009 and 2010, he was hospitalized for pancreatitis.