Jarvis Thurston (1914-2008), a native of Utah, was an editor, author, and educator who studied at the University of Utah and the University of California at Berkeley. He received a Ph.D. in literature from the University of Iowa in 1946 and was a professor of literature since that time. He taught at the University of Louisville for four years and in 1950 joined the faculty of Washington University. Thurston served as English Department chairman from 1967-1969 and retired in 1982. Thurston was instrumental in establishing Washington University's creative writing program and attracting a constellation of distinguished writers to the University including Stanley Elkin, Wayne Fields, Donald Finkel, William Gass, John Morris, Howard Nemerov, and Constance Urdang.

Thurston's articles and short stories have appeared in literary magazine and anthologies; however, he is best known as an editor. The co-author of Short Fiction Criticism, 1800-1958 (1960), Thurston edited two books, Reading Modern Short Stories (1955) and Short Stories from the Literary Magazines (1972). While at the University of Louisville, he and his wife, Mona Van Duyn, founded the quarterly Perspective and served as the magazine's principal editors for its entire run from 1947 to 1975. Thurston was regarded as a key figure in discovering some of the nation's best literary talent. Perspective published the early writing of several of his Washington University colleagues, along with works by James Gardner, Anthony Hecht, William S. Merwin and Douglas Woolf. He died in 2008 of heart disease.