Introduction of Roy Blount

Good afternoon.  I’m privileged to introduce to you a writer who since the late 1950s has been a prominent journalist, humorist, sports writer, novelist, dramatist, newspaper and magazine columnist, radio and television actor, screenwriter, and poet. I’m speaking, of course, of Roy Blount, who tomorrow will be inducted as a new honoree in the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame (the induction ceremony is tomorrow morning at 10:00 in this room).

Mr. Blount was born in Indianapolis but raised in Decatur, GA.  He began his career as a newspaper journalist, earned degrees from Vanderbilt and Harvard University, served two years in the army, worked for several years for the Atlanta Journal, was a staff writer for Sports Illustrated, and has been an independent writer for the last 40 years, during which time he has published some 23 books of commentary, humor, fiction and history.  These include a book about Robert E. Lee and another (presciently?) about the first woman president.  He’s been published in virtually every prominent American magazine I can think of.  He’s been widely anthologized.  Two of his best known books are About Three Bricks Shy of a Load (1974) about the Pittsburgh Steelers, which has been called by Jonathan Yardley of the Washington Post one of the ten best books about sports ever written, and Crackers: This whole many-angled thing of Jimmy, more Carters, ominous little animals, sad singing women, my daddy, and me (1980).  He’s written many other equally distinctive books since then.  He appears frequently on Prairie Home Companion, and I saw him last week on television present comments at the Mark Twain Prize ceremony at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. He has also written the best and perhaps only poem I’ve ever read about grits.

Roy Blount is one of the most important and active figures in American writing, journalism, and humor at work today.  I am pleased to present him to you.  He will speak on the subject of “Where I’m Coming From . . . .”

November 6, 2016, Georgia Writers Hall of Fame 

Special Collections Library, Univ. of Georgia

I drew for this introduction from the New Georgia Encyclopedia entry on Roy Blount by Lesa Carnes Corrigan (http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/arts-culture/roy-blount-jr-b-1941), his web site (http://www.royblountjr.com/), and common knowledge.