We met one time, at his office on the Norman campus, when I was about eighteen. He was gently encouraging, but I have to admit I don’t remember anything specific that he said. Cancer had taken part of his vocal apparatus, and he spoke through a hole in his throat. He smoked a pipe, and it was kind of disconcerting that he could talk and puff at the same time, the smoke coming out of the surgical opening. Distracting to a young kid.

Until the above comment, I had forgotten his The Look of the Old West, a solid well-written reference for anyone writing in that era, either the real one or the pulp-fiction version.

Joe Haldeman

Everything I learned came in the form of lectures and, always, dialogs and Q & A at the end of each class. He never resorted to bombast in class. He didn’t use any material from his books on writing nor did I ever read anything from them. Foster, as we called him, was extremely personable and charmed all his students, especially the majority of whom were females. They were there to learn to write for women’s magazines, “true romance” pulp magazines, etc. Several female students were already successfully publishing and wanted to become better writers. In many of his classes I was the only male.

Some of my English professors learned that I was taking his courses and expressed serious reservations about their value. I held all my literature professors in extremely high regard for the outstanding understanding of their specialities they taught me. But, I never took sides in the great opinion gulf about writing that yawned between the English and Journalism departments. To me, that gulf was a “yawn.”

Foster-Harris was a relentless debunker of the self-appointed legions of western lore “experts” so common in the Southwest where I grew up. My Boy Scout buddies and I had to listen to numerous Scout leaders who would never shut off their egos nor shut up. Could never understand how they could talk so much about something they knew nothing about. Foster knew it all and had extensively researched Western lore “truths” and myths.

After my 40-year career as a college library director I have begun my long-delayed interest to write fiction. My first effort is halfway completed. Many of Foster-Harris’s pointers come back to me when I sit down to write.

John W. Zwick

http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/hartfordcourant/obituary.aspx?pid=161253594

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I had moderate success writing fiction and drama, but finally I have found my niche–poetry. Foster-Harris’ classes don’t apply? Guess again.

Carol Lavelle Snow

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=7456

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