Ronald Fair

Ronald Lyman Fair (October 27, 1932 – February 2018) was an American writer and sculptor. He was known for his experimental and versatile literary forms, most prominently through the 1966 novel "Hog Butcher", set in 1960s Chicago. This was the basis of the 1975 film "Cornbread, Earl and Me". The cast included Rosalind Cash and Laurence Fishburne. Relocating to Finland, Fair began sculpting in 1977. In December 1980 he became "born again", thereafter becoming a "Christian writer" and founder of the International Orphans' Assistance Association.
Biography.
Ronald Fair was born to Mississippi farmworkers Herbert and Beulah Hunt Fair in Chicago, Illinois, where he went to school. After serving three years in the US Navy, he attended the Stenotype School of Chicago, after which he found employment as a court reporter for 12 years. Having begun writing in his teens, he published various pieces in publications including the "Chicago Defender", "Ebony", "Chat Noir", before the publication in 1965 of his first novel, "Many Thousand Gone: An American Fable". His second novel, "Hog Butcher" was filmed in 1975 as "Cornbread, Earl and Me". In 1970 he published "World of Nothing: Two Novellas", and 1972 the autobiographical novel "We Can't Breathe".
In 1977 Fair moved to Finland, where he dedicated himself more to sculpture than writing. In Finland, Fair lived in Helsinki, Tampere and Kerimäki.