David Huddle, beloved husband, father, friend, teacher, mentor and writer, died on October 7, 2025, in Burlington, Vt.
Originally from Ivanhoe, Va., he interrupted his undergraduate work at the University of Virginia to serve in the U.S. Army in Germany and Vietnam, where he earned a Bronze Star for his service. He returned to UVA, where he met his wife, Lindsey Massie, completed an MA at Hollins University and an MFA at Columbia University, then began teaching at the University of Vermont in 1971. His books vividly and profoundly reflect on these experiences, the people he knew and loved, and his dedication to the writing habit.
A prolific writer, he published nine books of poetry, six novels, five collections of short stories and a collection of essays. His work appeared in the New Yorker, the American Scholar, Esquire, Harper’s, Best American Short Stories, the Georgia Review, Green Mountains Review, Appalachian Heritage and Blackbird, among others. He received two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, in 1978 and 1987; he won the Library of Virginia Award for Fiction in 2012 and the PEN New England Award for Poetry in 2013; and he was a fellow of the Vermont Academy of Arts & Sciences. Writers admire his “his luminous characters,” “subtle flashes of insight” and “his rigorously conversational talk.” His friend Julia Alvarez writes, “Huddle gives us not just a glimpse, but that rare revelatory and redeeming experience of seeing and becoming … others, which is why we read and need his novels.”
In his 38 years at the University of Vermont and during his many decades at Middlebury College’s Bread Loaf School of English, David was a teacher as generous as he was brilliant. He cherished his friendships with colleagues and enthusiastically shared his love of American literature, creative writing and reading aloud. Knowing that writers need each other, he worked tirelessly to create a strong literary community by bringing stellar authors to campus and, at UVM, seeking to hire not only the best writers but also the most effective teachers. Colleagues write that they began to feel UVM was home when he and Lindsey welcomed them to campus by inviting them to dinner.
Many of David’s former students became successful writers thanks to his encouragement, advice, and introductions to literary agents and editors. He thrived on teaching and served as a visiting writer at universities across the country, including the Sewanee School of Letters and his alma mater, Hollins University. He also taught at the Rainier Writing Workshop for 13 summers. He valued each writer’s experience, perspective and identity. Those he taught became friends, and he often read manuscripts from former students for decades after they had left his class.
David lived vigorously. A tenor saxophone player in a band as a young man, he loved many genres of music: rock, classical, bluegrass, classic country and especially jazz, which inspired his novel Tenorman. He loved to dance in the kitchen while cooking dinner and at Bread Loaf barn dances. He played tennis every Saturday with Lindsey and any time he could with friends. His friend Hugh Coyle writes, “Anyone who attended Bread Loaf back in the ’90s will also remember David’s booming voice calling out “Volleyball!” after dinner.” He loved traveling with his family, especially the annual trip to Cape May, N.J. And in the last decade of his life, he took thousands of photographs of migratory birds.
He is survived by his wife, Lindsey; daughters, Bess and Molly; sons-in-law, Nick and Ray; and grandchildren, Hattie, Phoebe and Hank. He is predeceased by his brother Charles and survived by his brother Bill.
We are most grateful to the Residence at Quarry Hill staff who appreciated his humor and cared for him so tenderly. A memorial service will be held on Monday, November 24, 2025, 10 a.m., at St. James Episcopal Church in Essex Junction, Vt. To attend virtually, go to the St. James website: stjamesvt.org.
In lieu of flowers, please consider a donation to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology at birds.cornell.edu/home.
We treasure our memories of him and his many books. They will keep us company as we reckon with the anguish of his loss.
This article appears in Nov 5-11 2025.
I was deeply saddened to hear of David’s passing. He was my teacher in the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers. And he supported my work many years afterwards with blurbs and encouragement. I will forever be indebted to him for his guidance when I was a young writer, just trying to find my voice. He was a great influence on me, and I will not forget him.
I literally began reading Past My Future for the hundredth or so times this evening. For whatever reasons that story will forever have me in its orbit. He inspired me to test a female narrator. I can’t go back. As a female voice, I ca do and say and act just as I believe she might, and not worry about fitting into a gender square of actions and reactions. Thank you David for helping give my characters voice and life.
I’m sorry to have missed the memorial service. I only learned of David’s passing tonight. I began taking David’s creative writing classes in the early eighties. I think I took four or five workshops with him. David did more for me than I could say, helping me to make a writing life for myself. Our son, Truman David, was named after him. Oddly, the first thing that comes to mind when I remember David is a moment from one of his workshops when I’d read a passage of fiction aloud and mispronounced “revered”. I said it as “revvvv-erd”—like an engine revving. David slapped his palm on the table, stopped the class, looked at me with slightly cocked head, addressed me in that soft southern drawl sounding both amused and offended, “Revvvveard, Robert? Revvverred?” I’ve heard that voice a good part of my life, usually at times when I felt inclined to poke fun at myself. There was that. And there was leaving one of his classes at night, Christmas season. We brought drinks to class—he brought beer. It was snowing, and he was last to leave. We waited for him outside Lafayette Hall and plastered him with snowballs. He took it with his usual good humor, standing on the top step, laughing. He might have thrown a snowball or two himself. A kind man. A great friend, writer, professor, mentor. I’ll miss him terribly.
I am sorry to have missed the memorial service for David, as I was out of the country the entire month of November. I have been thinking of him often, as a friend, fellow tennis player, excellent poker player, brilliant writer, and a very funny man. I feel so fortunate to have known him.
A few years after my wife and I opened Blue Ridge Books in 1983, a bookstore in Wythevile, Virginia, not far from where David grew up, he came to do a reading from his new book, Only The Little Bone.
He was kind and generous and congratulatory about our bookshop, and in a not insignificant way, helped it thrive and grow. When we sold the shop and I went to med school at UVA, it was in part due to the confidence I gained from people like David, who believed in me, and offered lots of encouragement. Now, fully 40 years later, I still remember his goodness and grace, and I am sorry to hear that he is no longer with us. He touched many lives, mine not the least.
David was my teacher at Bread loaf in 1986. He taught a wonderful short story course and introduced me to lots of writers. I remember him as a very special teacher who inspired me in my own 43 year career as a teacher.
Praise to the end.
My heart goes out to Lindsey, Bess, and Molly, and their families! David was a brilliant writer, and one of the kindest and most generous readers I’ve ever had. He encouraged me and countless others to continue writing, to find what we were searching for in our poetry or fiction. I will always remember how well he lived his life at Bread Loaf — early rising in order to write before breakfast, devoted teaching, tennis in the afternoons! Ah, David! May your spirit of wisdom and fun, depth and mischief, care and love of language, live on! It certainly will, in all who had the great good fortune to know you.
One of my favorite teachers—I took an American short story class with Professor Hiddle in Lafayette in 1983. The first story was Richard Yates’s “Jody Rolled the Bones.” I have my 1980s copy of the professor’s book Only the Little Bone. The last time we talked, in 2017 or 2018, he recommended Marian Engel’s novel, Bear, which was just as good as he promised.
In class once, he and I exchanged a look when Amazing Grace came up. It was the song the waitstaff sang at the last night’s dinner at Breadloaf. That look, though he didn’t recall it when I mentioned it years later, was a sign of shared experience and, indeed, grace.