| Michael Mewshaw | |
|---|---|
Reading at the 2006 Key West Literary Seminar |
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| Born | February 19, 1943 Washington, DC |
| Occupation | novelist, nonfiction writer, journalist |
| Nationality | United States |
| Genres | Nonfiction |
| Notable work(s) |
Year of the Gun Short Circuit: Six Months on the Men’s Professional Tennis Tour Ladies of the Court: Grace And Disgrace On The Women's Tennis Tour |
Michael Mewshaw (born February 19, 1943) is an American author of 11 novels and 8 books of nonfiction, and works frequently as a travel writer, investigative reporter, book reviewer, and tennis reporter.[1] His novel Year of the Gun was made into a film of the same name by John Frankenheimer in 1991. He is married with two sons.
Alan Cheuse, National Public Radio's longtime "voice of books," has called him “the best novelist in America that nobody knows.”[2]
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Born in Washington, DC, and raised in the suburb of Prince George's County, Maryland,[3] Mewshaw graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Maryland (1965), then was granted a four-year fellowship to attend the graduate writing program at the University of Virginia, where he attained his Masters (1966) and Doctorate (1970) degrees under the tutelage of George Garrett.[4] While studying at UVA, Mewshaw completed two unpublished novels, then embarked on a road trip across Mexico with his wife (at the urging of William Styron, who was the subject of his masters thesis and doctoral dissertation); a journey which would form the basis of his first novel Man in Motion (1970), which he completed while on a Fulbright Fellowship in France.[5]
Mewshaw taught creative writing at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and subsequently was named Director of Creative writing at the University of Texas at Austin. Taking leaves of absence every other year from this post, Mewshaw based himself in Rome, Italy, and continued traveling throughout Europe and North Africa. While Mewshaw researched his third novel The Toll (1974) in Marrakesh, Morocco, his wife Linda was hired as Lindsay Wagner’s stand-in on the set of Robert Wise’s film Two People. Mewshaw’s experience of that shoot was the jumping-off point for his fifth novel Land Without Shadow (1979).[6]