Quinn traveled widely to lecture and discuss his books. He became a well-known author to followers of the environmental, simple living, and anarchist movements, although he did not strongly self-identify with any of these. Ishmael became the first of a loose trilogy of novels by Quinn, including The Story of B and My Ishmael, all of which brought increasing fame to Quinn throughout the 1990s. Several judges disputed giving the entire $500,000 award to Quinn for Ishmael, rather than dividing the money among several authors, though judge Ray Bradbury, for one, supported the decision. He is best known for his book Ishmael (1992), which won the Turner Tomorrow Fellowship Award in 1991. In 1975, Quinn left his career as a publisher to become a freelance writer. Quinn went into publishing, abandoned his Catholic faith, and married twice unsuccessfully, before marrying Rennie MacKay Quinn, his third and final wife of 42 years. He delayed part of this university education, however, while a postulant at the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani in Bardstown, Kentucky, where he hoped to become a Trappist monk however his spiritual director, Thomas Merton, prematurely ended Quinn's postulancy. He went on to study at Saint Louis University, at the University of Vienna, Austria, through IES Abroad, and at Loyola University, receiving a bachelor's degree in English cum laude in 1957. 2.1.1.1 Comparison to Malthusian catastropheĭaniel Quinn was born in Omaha, Nebraska, where he graduated from Creighton Preparatory School.