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Authors' photo (taken at a Memphis bookstore in October,
1998). From left to right: Margaret Skinner, John Fergus Ryan, Shelby Foote, Tom Graves, and Joan Williams. I was born in Memphis, Tennessee
on the very same night some guy with long sideburns was recording a song called "That's Allright, Mama" at the tiny
Sun Records studio on Union Avenue, right down the street from the hospital. For those of you who can appreciate irony, just
a stone's throw from the Sun studio, where musicians of all races joined ideas that rocked the world, is a big statue of Confederate
general Nathan Bedford Forrest. Not one in a hundred Memphians knows that the long-departed general and his wife are buried
beneath that statue.
Music writer Peter Guralnick said about Memphis, "Memphis
is the only city in the world that celebrates its own weirdness." Amen, to that.
I
graduated from Sheffield High School in Memphis in 1972, got a B.A. in Journalism from the University of Memphis in 1976,
and received an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Memphis in 1998. Go figure.
At present I teach
English and Humanities at LeMoyne-Owen College in Memphis. In the past I have been a reporter, a critic, the editor
of two magazines (one of which was Rock & Roll Disc), a p.r. man, an ad copywriter, and other assorted careers.
I have a very wonderful and beautiful grown daughter from my first marriage and surprised a lot of people -- including
family -- when I went to Africa a few years back and married a gorgeous Senegalese, Bintou. Life has not been the same
since. You can read about my African adventures in this web site.
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