Lit & Law Profs
These four authors are/were scholars and teachers who count writing fiction among their interests.
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Douglas Day (1932-2004) shows how a base in academe can bring stability to a writing career. He spent 47 of his 72 years at UVa. He was a professor of English and comparative literature. He also taught creative writing. Most of his works were scholarly, but he also wrote two historical novels.
Day was born in Panama, where his father, a U.S. Navy officer, was stationed. Day joined the Marines and became a pilot, but injury in a car accident ended his flying career. He continued to serve as a reserve officer. He earned his BA, MA, and PhD at the University of Virginia-Charlottesville, joined the faculty in 1962, and taught literature there until he retired in 2000.
He won the National Book Award for a 1974 biography of Malcolm Lowry and also wrote about Robert Graves, William Faulkner, and other authors. A fluent Spanish speaker, he had a lifelong interest in Hispanic literature and culture. He studied and taught in Spain and Latin America.
His first novel, Journey of the Wolf, concerns a Spanish Civil War veteran who returns from exile during the final years of Franco’s reign. Day told LJ in 1977, “I teach a great deal of modern fiction, and I find increasingly that I am bored with what I teach---too much play with form, too little content.” Fourteen years later he published his second novel, about the Mexican Revolution. He was working on another novel in retirement, but troubled by ill health, was unable to finish it.
Novels
Journey of the Wolf Atheneum, 1977 * Winner, Rosenthal Fiction Award. “Narrated in lean, efficient prose, with unobtrusive flashbacks to the war, this first novel is a taut adventure story of an exile’s return to danger, disillusionment and death” –New York Times
“manages to outlast the errors and inexperience of its author.”
--Time
The Prison Notebooks of Ricardo Flores Magon Harcourt Brace, 1991 * “Ultimately, the hero’s voice is not strong enough to propel the novel…The rich historical material here, however, exercises a pull on the reader’s imagination.” –Publishers Weekly
Main sources: The Cavalier Daily, Inside UVa Online, Contemporary Authors
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Garrett Epps is a legal scholar. Most of his writing is nonfiction, but he has also written two novels about politics.
Born in Richmond, Va. in 1950, Epps went to Harvard, where he was editor of the Crimson. His first career was in journalism; he was a reporter for the Richmond Mercury
and other papers, and managing editor of a “short-lived liberal weekly” (he told LJ in 1977). He has continued to contribute articles to periodicals, including New Republic. He earned an MA in creative writing from Hollins College and a law degree from Duke. He is now a professor at the University of Oregon law school. His recent books have been historical studies of the Constitution.
Earlier, he published two novels dealing with lawmakers, the first set in Richmond, the second in Washington, D.C.
The Shad Treatment Putnam 1977# University Press of Virginia 1997* “a promising start toward entering Epps’ name on the list of prominent southern writers.” –Library Journal
The Floating Island Houghton Mifflin 1985*# “It may seem like a farce but in truth it tells how things don’t work in the nation’s capital.” –user review on amazon.com
Main sources: University of Oregon law school Web site
Wikipedia
Contemporary Authors
Curt Leviant chose not to be listed.
Wyatt Wyatt (1937-2002) was an English professor who published two “mainstream” novels.
Born in Oklahoma, Wyatt traveled widely in the U.S. and Europe, holding what are often called “jacket bio” jobs, because authors like to say that they’ve gotten their hands dirty: bag-worm picker, janitor, gold miner… He was also a poet, critic, screenwriter, and political speechwriter.
He taught literature at the University of Central Florida 1969-1998. His academic department’s death notice also sounds like an epitaph on his novels. It quotes Charles Micarelli, dean for humanities and social sciences: “The novels were excellent. They were well written and engaged the reader. Both were considered for movies, but that didn’t work out. Those things often don’t work out.”
So it’s heartening to record that Wyatt’s name has not been extinguished. The university established a scholarship in creative writing in his name, and its libraries preserve his manuscripts and other papers.
Novels
Catching Fire Random House 1977* “This first novel is as shapeless as a punctured balloon.” --Library Journal
Deep in the Heart Atheneum 1980 pb* “This is a novel of no great consequence, but one of immense charm and small truths.” --Library Journal
*Available from amazon.com #Stocked by St. Louis County Library
Main source: documents on ucf.edu