DANIEL QUINN

1935-2018

Daniel Quinn, best known as the author of Ishmael, The Story of B, My Ishmael, and Providence, died of aspiration pneumonia on February 17, 2018 at Houston Hospice. He was 82.

When they left Chicago for New Mexico in 1979, Daniel and Rennie Quinn never imagined they’d find a home in Madrid, a tiny former ghost town, or that they’d start a weekly newspaper that would serve a Rhode Island-sized territory east of Albuquerque and south of Santa Fe. They certainly never dreamed they’d spend 30 years in Texas–first in Austin and finally in Houston. It was here they discovered, in 1997, the newly-built loft in the Montrose District--their ideal kind of living and working space. It was like coming full circle, back to a city neighborhood akin to the one they’d left in Chicago when they set out on their westward journey.

The substance of Daniel’s education and career can be found at www.ishmael.org and Wikipedia.

First and foremost, Daniel lived to write, and there can be no more fitting epitaph than this recent email from a reader: “Your books have forever changed me. Thank you.”

In addition to Rennie, his wife of 42 years and constant companion, Daniel is survived by his adult children: Teresa Mitchell (Michael), Stephen Quinn (Michele), and Jae Quinn; his younger brother, Ed (Darlene), and their children; granddaughters Jennifer Laurel and Kiera Hoffmann (Jr), and two toddler great-grandsons. He was preceded in death by his parents, Bert and Thelma Quinn, his older brother, Dennis, and his second-born daughter, Clare Kendall.

Donations may be made in Daniel’s memory to Cultural Survival or Survival International, two organizations devoted to the well-being of indigenous peoples around the world.