Thomas Patrick Huston

Thomas Patrick Huston Thomas Patrick Huston
Huston and activist Bill Ayers
Occupation	Writer/Artist

Thomas Patrick Huston is a published writer, photographer, musician, and award-winning filmmaker. His first documentary was on a controversial subject (the use of the word "nigger") and presented in an unconventional way, he managed to beat thirty other documentaries, some by established filmmakers, in a contest sponsored by The Documentary Channel. Huston finished his second documentary in early 2008 and is currently working on a PhD at Indiana University. His subject area is in Curriculum and Instruction with minors in educational leadership and policy studies and in communication and culture. In 2011 Huston was published by Oxford University Press.

Early life

Huston graduated from James Whitcomb Riley High School in his native town of South Bend, Indiana. He moved to Lafayette, Indiana, in 1992 and spent nine years collecting degrees (BA in English Education, a BA in Creative Writing, and a Masters in English) at Purdue University and three years teaching high school at Jefferson High School. Lafayette's newspaper Journal and Courier ran three articles on Huston's Advanced Placement Senior English course, including an editorial praising his teaching style.

Huston left secondary teaching in 1999 after Purdue University offered a teaching stipend. He taught Composition 101 and 102 at Purdue University while obtaining his Master's degree. In 2000 he moved to Chicago and was an editor for Houghton-Mifflin for three years before pursuing art full-time.

Huston moved back to his native state of Indiana in December 2007. He currently (2010) resides in Bloomington and is working on his PhD in Curriculum and Instruction at Indiana University.

Photography

Huston's published photograph "Warhol"

Huston's photography has been published in The Potomac Review^[1], After Hours,^[2] the premier issue of The Writer's Block,^[3] and The Truth about the Fact.^[4]

Film

In 2007 Huston's documentary A Grassroots Analysis of the N Word^[5] was announced as the grand prize winning documentary^[6]^[7] in a contest sponsored by The Documentary Channel and VMix. A Grassroots Analysis of the N Word had a world premiere^[8] on June 23, 2007, on The Documentary Channel during the channel's prime time hours.

The website Internet Video Magazine listed A Grassroots Analysis of the N Word on their list of "Best Films and Videos of the Week" and said the film was "a very interesting documentary." The website also listed the video in their section titled "Political and Controversial Videos and Websites: A guide to websites who want to change the world through video and multimedia."^[9]

On July 11, 2007, the Oak Park, Illinois newspaper Oak Leaves published an article on Huston and his winning documentary, "A Grassroots Analysis of the N Word." The title of the article was Film gets takes on controversial word.

Huston finished his second documentary, they do more for prisoners than they do for vets^[10] in early 2008. He has entered it in multiple contests including the first ever online film festival.^[11] "they do more for prisoners than they do for vets" is an edited version of Huston's longest documentary to date, Viet Iraq.

Huston is editing over eight hours of footage of a Vietnam Veteran he developed a friendship with and followed for two years. The themes of the piece will include addiction, cancer, mental illness and homelessness.

Music

In 2003 Huston and three others from Houghton-Mifflin started a band called Heather. Huston started out writing lyrics and other song craft ideas, but was eager to contribute musically, and so he bought a keyboard and self-taught himself how to play. The band only played live once during a battle of the bands concert.

Heather stayed together for a little over a year. Huston decided not to give up music entirely and began a solo project called Wind, Trees and BIrds^[12] and another project with a friend called Magdalene. Huston began experimenting with GarageBand by creating a unique collage of sounds by mixing talk from Polish radio, distortion, drum beats, and keyboards, and his goal in each instrumental is usually to have the soundscape represent the title of each song. The two songs heard in A Grassroots Analysis of the N Word are written and performed by Huston.

Writing

Huston has written a novella, a play, shorts stories, and over one-hundred poems. In 2011 Huston's writing was published by Oxford University Press. The piece is titled, "Language and Controversy."^[13]

References

External links

Huston's Current Email: tphuston@indiana.edu