Donald Slaven “Skip” Hays was born on February 14, 1947, in Jacksonville, Florida, and grew up in Van Buren, Arkansas. After earning his BA in English in 1969 from Southern Arkansas University, Hays served as a psychiatric aide at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS). He later played semiprofessional baseball on Cape Cod and in Oklahoma, before completing an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Arkansas in 1983. His debut novel The Dixie Association (1984) was based on his experience in baseball and was nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction in 1984. Other notable works by Hays include The Hangman’s Children (1989), Stories: Contemporary Southern Fiction (1989), and Dying Light and Other Stories (2005). Hays served as director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Arkansas from 1998 to 2013.
Skip Hays died on November 21, 2025.
#1: Still frame from Pryor Center video interview with Skip Hays at the Laurie Merlee Ceramics Studio; Fayetteville, Arkansas, 2011
© Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History, University of Arkansas
#2: Behind-the-scenes photo from Pryor Center interview with Skip Hays at the Laurie Merlee Ceramics Studio; Fayetteville, Arkansas, 2011
© Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History, University of Arkansas
#3: Still frame from Pryor Center video interview with Skip Hays at the Laurie Merlee Ceramics Studio; Fayetteville, Arkansas, 2011
© Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History, University of Arkansas
