KNOXVILLE — A spellbinding work of historical fiction is the topic for this week’s College of Arts and Sciences Pregame Showcase at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
Led by Michael Knight, professor of English, the showcase will focus on Knight’s novel, The Typist, the story of a man who finds himself in the employ of General Douglas MacArthur during the occupation of Japan after WWII.
The showcase will take place Saturday, November 19, before the Vols’ final home game against Vanderbilt University. The showcase will begin at 5:00 p.m., two hours before the game’s kickoff. Featuring a thirty-minute presentation, followed by a fifteen-minute question-and-answer session, each showcase is free and open to the public and held in the Carolyn P. Brown Memorial University Center Room 213. Light refreshments are provided, and guests have a chance to win door prizes. Guests who complete a registration form receive a 10 percent discount coupon for gameday purchases from the UT Bookstore.
Knight’s presentation will focus on the process of translating historical figures and events into fiction for the novel. He will read and discuss several selections from the novel.
Knight is an award-winning author whose works also include Divining Rod, Dogfight and Other Stories, The Holiday Season, and Goodnight, Nobody. His fiction has appeared in magazines such as Esquire, The New Yorker and Oxford American, and his stories have been anthologized in Best American Mystery Stories and New Stories from the South: The Year’s Best. He also wrote the screenplay Birdland adapted from the short story and optioned by Robert Duvall. Additionally, he co-wrote the screenplay Smash and Grab with Scott Cooper, the writer and director of Crazyheart.
His awards include the John and Renee Grisham Emerging Southern Writer Award, the New Writing Award from the Fellowship of Southern Writers, the PEN/Hemingway Foundation Special Citation in Fiction, and the Henfield Foundation Award for Fiction.
Knight teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in creative writing and fiction writing at UT Knoxville. He received the Graduate Student Association Award for Best Professor Inside the Classroom for the 2008-2009 academic year.
The Pregame Showcase is sponsored by the College of Arts and Sciences. Sponsorship is also provided by WUOT 91.9 FM, with support from the UT Knoxville Office of Alumni Affairs and UT Athletics. For more information, visit http://pregameshowcase.utk.edu/.
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C O N T A C T :
Beth Gladden (865-974-9008, bgladden@utk.edu)