Robert Ruark

Robert Chester Ruark Jr. (1915–1965) was an American journalist, syndicated columnist, and novelist associated with North Carolina and the outdoor writing of the mid-twentieth century. Born in Wilmington, he entered the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill at fifteen and graduated in 1935 with a journalism degree. Early reporting jobs led to the Washington Daily News; after U.S. Navy service during the Second World War, he returned to journalism and wrote a nationally syndicated column for Scripps-Howard newspapers.

Ruark combined satire, reporting, fiction, and writing about hunting and travel. His column collections included I Didn’t Know It Was Loaded and One for the Road, while his early novel Grenadine Etching satirized historical romance. African travel informed Horn of the Hunter and the novels Something of Value and Uhuru, works that address colonial-era East Africa and were noted at the time for their depictions of violence. His Field & Stream series about a boy and his grandfather’s lessons in coastal North Carolina became The Old Man and the Boy and The Old Man’s Boy Grows Older.

The posthumous collection Robert Ruark's Africa, compiled and annotated by Michael McIntosh, brings together Ruark’s African magazine writing. Ruark was inducted into the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame in 2000. His papers are preserved at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, documenting his career as a columnist and author.