Daniel Quinn (born 11 October 1935 in Omaha, Nebraska) is an American writer described as an environmentalist and best known for his novel Ishmael (published in 1992), which won the Turner Tomorrow Fellowship Award in 1991. Quinn does not, however, identify himself as an "environmentalist" and points out that the term creates a false dichotomy, evoking the notion of the environment as being distinct from living organisms, specifically human life. He has described his own philosophy as new tribalism. Daniel Quinn was born in Omaha, Nebraska, where he graduated from Creighton Preparatory School. He went on to study at Saint Louis University, at University of Vienna, Austria, through IES Abroad, and at Loyola University, receiving a bachelor's degree in English, cum laude, in 1957. He delayed part of this university education, however, by briefly becoming a postulant of the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani in Bardstown, Kentucky. Although hoping to become a Trappist monk, his spiritual director, Thomas Merton, decided it best to end Quinn's postulancy. Quinn then went into publishing, abandoned his Catholic faith, and went through two unsuccessful marriages.