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I was born in Memphis, Tennessee on the very same night some guy with long sideburns was recording
a song called "That's Allright, Mama" at the tiny Sun Records studio on Union Avenue, right down the street
from the hospital. For those of you who can appreciate irony, just a stone's throw from the Sun studio, where musicians
of all races joined ideas that rocked the world, is a big statue of Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest. Not one in
a hundred Memphians knows that the long-departed general and his wife are buried beneath that statue.  Authors' photo (taken at Burke's Bookstore, Memphis, TN, Oct. 1998). From left to
right: Margaret Skinner, John Fergus Ryan, Shelby Foote, Tom Graves, and Joan Williams. |
Music writer Peter Guralnick said about Memphis, "Memphis is the only city in the world that
celebrates its own weirdness." Amen, to that. I graduated from Sheffield High School
in Memphis in 1972, got a B.A. in Journalism from the University of Memphis in 1976, and received an M.F.A. in Creative Writing
from the University of Memphis in 1998. Go figure.
At present I teach English and Humanities at LeMoyne-Owen College
in Memphis. In the past I have been a reporter, a critic, the editor of two magazines (one of which was Rock & Roll
Disc), a p.r. man, an ad copywriter, and other assorted careers.
I have a very wonderful and beautiful
grown daughter from my first marriage and surprised a lot of people -- including family -- when I went to Africa a few years
back and married a gorgeous Senegalese, Bintou. Life has not been the same since. You can read about my African
adventures in this web site.
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