Walter Tevis
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Walter Stone Tevis (February 28, 1928 - August 8, 1984) was an American author. He was born in San Francisco.
His father, a Madison County, Kentucky native, brought his family back to Kentucky from San Francisco when Walter Tevis was ten years old. After serving in the Pacific Theater during World War II, Tevis graduated from Model High School in 1945 and entered the University of Kentucky. While a student there, Tevis worked in a pool-room and published a story about pool written for A. B. Guthrie's writing class. After being awarded a Masters degree from the University, Tevis wrote for the Kentucky Highway Department and taught school in Science Hill, Hawesville, Irvine, Carlisle, and then at the University of Kentucky.
He was an English literature professor at Ohio University (in Athens, OH) from 1965 to 1978, where he received an MFA. He wrote seven novels, three of which were the basis of major motion pictures of the same names: The Hustler (1959), and The Color of Money (1984)—both about fictional poolhall hustler "Fast Eddie" Felson—and the science fiction novel The Man Who Fell to Earth (1963). He also wrote Mockingbird (1980), Far From Home (1981), The Steps of the Sun (1983), and The Queen's Gambit (1983).
He was a nominee for the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1980 for Mockingbird. During one of his last televised interviews, Tevis revealed that PBS once planned a production of Mockingbird as a follow-up to its successful adaptation of The Lathe of Heaven (1980).
Tevis spent his last years in New York as a full-time writer. He died of lung cancer in 1984 and is buried in Richmond, Kentucky.
