Earl Hamner Jr.

Earl Hamner Jr. was a Virginia-born novelist, television writer, producer, and creator of The Waltons. Spencer’s Mountain, published in 1961, drew on his upbringing in a large family in the Blue Ridge community of Schuyler. The novel was adapted first for film and later helped provide the foundation for The Waltons, whose fictional family and mountain setting transformed Hamner's memories for television. He also wrote scripts for The Twilight Zone and created Falcon Crest. Across those forms, Hamner repeatedly returned to family storytelling, regional history, and the tension between remembered places and the demands that draw people away from them.