Brian Doyle, the Lake Oswego author whose prodigious literary output earned him numerous honors including the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature ("puzzling him to this day," say several of his author biographies), died Saturday from complications related to a brain tumor. He was 60 years old.

Doyle learned in November that he had what he described to The Oregonian/OregonLive as a "big honkin' brain tumor." That month he had surgery to reduce the tumor; in February he began radiation and chemotherapy treatments, according to a GoFundMe page that a family friend set up to help defray his medical expenses. By spring, he was in hospice care.

"Cancer is to be endured, that's all," he wrote in an eerily prescient 2009 commentary piece for The Oregonian/OregonLive.

He wrote "Mink River," the Oregon Coast novel beloved by book clubs nationwide; "Martin Marten," the Oregon Book Award-winning novel about a boy and a pine marten growing up side by side on Mount Hood; and books about pinot noir, Catholicism, and the heart, to name just a few more.

He spun sometimes puckish, sometimes heartfelt short stories about life's follies and oddities ("Bin Laden's Bald Spot"), humorous yet poignant essays ("Children and Other Wild Animals"), and prayers that were less about a particular faith than about universal compassion and gratitude ("Prayer for Cashiers and Checkout-Counter Folks").

He edited Portland Magazine, the University of Portland publication that under his leadership punched well above its weight class, eschewing alumni fluff pieces in favor of serious contributions from nationally known writers. He received an honorary doctorate from the university during this year's graduation ceremonies in early May.

"Brian exemplified God's grace by how he lived his life," University of Portland President the Rev. Mark L. Poorman said Saturday in a news release. "He was a man filled with a sense of humanity and wonder, who was interested in everyone's story and who saw everyone's potential. His warmth, humor and passion for life will be deeply missed."

Doyle was a friend to numerous members of Oregon's literary community and felt like a friend to countless others who prized his works. Admirers included the writer and humorist Ian Frazier, who in a 2016 Christmas poem in The New Yorker devoted two lines to "The Brian Doyle, the Portland sage;/His writing's really all the rage."

News of Doyle's diagnosis in November was greeted with disbelief and sorrow by his fans. Many contributed to a GoFundMe account to help defray his medical expenses; donations had reached nearly $165,000 by the time of his death. The family friend who set up the account, Catherine Green, wrote on the crowdfunding site in January that Doyle had told her his greatest fear was not being able to provide for his family and that the money brought him peace of mind.

A group of Doyle's fellow authors, including Kim Stafford, David James Duncan, Hob Osterlund, Melissa Madenski and Tom Booth, set up a separate GoFundMe account this spring with the goal of retiring the mortgage on the family home.

It was unsurprising to those who knew Doyle to any degree that his illness would inspire such a response.

"He's really made an impact on so many people," said Laurie C. Kelley, who came to know Doyle during her tenure as the University of Portland's chief marketing officer and later its vice president for university relations.

Brian James Patrick Doyle was born in 1956 in New York to Ethel Clancey Doyle, a teacher, and James Doyle, a journalist who was executive director of the Catholic Press Association for 30 years. He attended the University of Notre Dame, where he majored in English, graduating in 1978.

His day jobs were at magazines: U.S. Catholic, Boston College Magazine and finally Portland Magazine, where he became editor in 1991, a position he held until his death.

But it was his fervor for storytelling and his unqualified joy in writing that made his name nationally, with his fans searching out not only his books but also his writings for The Sun magazine, the Daily Guideposts website and other publications. He credited his father with nurturing his literary passion, telling one interviewer, "He taught me more than anyone or anything that stories swim by the millions and most of being a writer is listening and seeing and then madly scribbling."

Oregon, the adopted home he credited in a 2015 interview with giving him "the people I love best, wonderful friends, good work, clean water by the ton from the sky," was the source of some of the stories he treasured most, such as "Mink River." "That book had Oregonness," he said in a 2016 interview with The Oregonian/OregonLive. "That pleases me enormously as a way to say thank you to Oregon."

Doyle's most recent story, published in March, was the novel "The Adventures of John Carson in Several Quarters of the World: A Novel of Robert Louis Stevenson," a masterful ode to storytelling and storytellers.

Inspired by Doyle's lifelong love of Stevenson's works, the novel reads much like the Scottish author's writing: "I should begin by showing you the man, insofar as I am able, as he was then, at the prime of life and the peak of his powers. Taller than not, and burly rather than thick; as he said himself, while we saw eye to eye as regards our height, he was twice the man I was in volume."

But there is no question that "The Adventures of John Carson" is a Doyle book with passages such as this:

"There is a story in every thing, and every being, and every moment, were we alert to catch it, were we ready with our tender nets; indeed there are a hundred, a thousand stories, uncountable stories, could they only be lured out and appreciated; and more and more now I realize that what I thought was a skill only for authors and pastors and doctors and dream-diviners is the greatest of all human skills, the one that allows us into the heart and soul and deepest layers of our companions on the brief sunlit road between great dark wildernesses."

It is one of numerous passages in which Doyle celebrates stories. "To catch and share stories, what could be holier and cooler than that?" he told The Oregonian/OregonLive. "Stories change lives; stories save lives. ... They crack open hearts, they open minds."

And that particular passage includes the word "tender," a word Doyle made a point of using in interviews after he learned of his brain tumor. "Be tender," he said to those who might want to help him.

"Be tender and laugh."

Doyle's survivors include his wife, Mary Miller Doyle; sons, Liam and Joseph; and daughter, Lily.

Funeral arrangements will be announced at a later date, the university news release said.

-- Amy Wang

awang@oregonian.com