Herbert Kubly, author, journalist, and teacher, was born in New Glarus, Wisconsin on April 26, 1915. Upon graduation from the University of Wisconsin with a BA in 1937, having majored in philosophy and journalism, he took a job as a police reporter on the Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph. In 1939 he became art critic for the same paper, a post he held until 1942 when he was hired as a reporter on the New York Herald-Tribune. From 1945 to 1947, he was an editor and music critic for Time magazine.
Meanwhile, Kubly began writing plays, the first of these being Men to the Sea which was produced on Broadway in 1944. From 1945 to 1947, he also served as secretary of the Dramatists' Guild of America. In 1947 and 1948 the National Theater Conference, through its New Playwrights' Committee, awarded Kubly a fellowship. During this same period, he held a Rockefeller grant for creative writing. He also held fellowships in 1947, 1948, 1956 and 1957 at the McDowell Colony in Peterboro, New Hampshire.
From 1949 to 1955, Kubly was associate professor of speech and director of the Playwrights' Workshop at the University of Illinois in Urbana. In 1950 he received a Fulbright Scholarship to go to Italy “for study of the use of the humanities in the democratization of a former totalitarian people.” Out of this grant and the 14 months which it enabled him to spend in Italy, Kubly wrote his first book, American in Italy, which won the National Book Award for the best work of non-fiction in 1955. Other books written by him include Easter in Sicily (1956), Varieties of Love (1958), Italy (Life World Library, 1961), The Whistling Zone (1963), Switzerland (Life World Library, 1964), At Large (1964), and Gods and Heroes (1969). He has also written several hundred short stories and articles on music, literature, travel, and theater for Time, Life, Holiday, Atlantic, Esquire, Vogue, Venture, Town and Country, The Saturday Review, and others.
In 1962, Kubly received a citation from the University of Wisconsin for “distinguished service as author, dramatist, and educator.” From 1962 to 1964, he served as visiting lecturer at Columbia University and the New School of Social Science in New York. From 1964 to 1968, he was a professor at San Francisco State College and he is currently a professor of English at the Parkside (Kenosha) Campus of the University of Wisconsin.
(Sources: Material furnished by Mr. Kubly, Current Biography, Who's Who)
