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Joel Agee

American writer and translator

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 1, 2026
Entity authorityQ1502566 ↗
Source-derived summary

Joel Agee (born 20 March 1940 in New York City) is an American writer and translator. He lives in New York.

Early life

Joel Agee is the son of the American author James Agee. After his parents divorced in 1941, he and his mother Alma Agee, née Mailman, went to live in Mexico where she met and married the expatriate German novelist Bodo Uhse. Agee's half-brother Stefan Uhse, born in Mexico in 1946, took his own life in 1973 in New York City. In 1948 the family moved to the Soviet sector of Berlin, where Uhse became editor in chief of the cultural magazine Aufbau, a member of the GDR-Volkskammer, and later chairman of the East German writers association. When her marriage failed in 1960, Alma Uhse relocated with her sons back to the United States.

Joel Agee grew up in a literary family, and at an early age was determined to become a writer. Having various times dropped out of school, he was to a certain degree self-educated. He married Susan Lemansky in 1966 and their daughter Gina was born in 1967.

Editorial summary

“Joel Agee” enters the record as american writer and translator. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Joel, Agee and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1940, 1941, 1946, 1973—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1940-01-01. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Joel, Agee and American.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Joel Agee” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Joel, Agee and American provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1502566. VIAF identifies the subject as 37707412. The Library of Congress control number is n80135900. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1940, 1941, 1946 and 1973.

Critical limits

A concise life account rarely captures disputed attribution, private networks or the changing language used to describe a career. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Joel Agee”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Joel Agee primary sources, Joel Agee archive and Joel research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Joel Agee”?
  2. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
  3. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Joel Agee” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.