Walter Tevis
Walter Tevis was born in San Francisco in 1928 and lived in the Sunset District, close to Golden Gate Park and the sea, for the first ten years of his life. He remained immensely proud of being born in that city. At the age of ten his parents placed him in the Stanford Children's Convalescent home for a year during which time they returned to Kentucky, where the Tevis family had been given an early grant of land in Madison County. Walter traveled across country alone by train at the age of eleven to rejoin his family and felt the shock of entering the Appalachian culture when he enrolled in the local school. He made friends with Toby Kavanaugh, a fellow student at the Lexington high school, and learned to shoot pool on the table of the recreation room in the Kavanaugh mansion, and to read science fiction books for the first time in Toby's small library. They remained lifelong friends and Toby grew up to become the owner of a pool room in Lexington.
At the age of seventeen, Walter became a carpenter's mate in the Navy, serving on board the USS Hamil in Okinawa. After his discharge, he studied at the University of Kentucky where he received B.A. and M.A. degrees in English Literature and studied with Abe Guthrie, author of The Big Sky. Upon graduation he taught everything from the sciences and English to physical education in small-town Kentucky high schools. At that time he began writing short stories, which were published in The Saturday Evening Post, Esquire, Redbook, Cosmopolitan and Playboy. He wrote his first novel The Hustler, which was published in 1959 by Harper & Row and followed that with The Man Who Fell to Earth, which was published in 1963 by Gold Medal Books. He taught English Literature and Creative Writing at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio for fourteen years, where he was a distinguished Professor, and left that post in 1978 to come to New York and resume writing. He wrote four more novels - Mockingbird, The Steps of the Sun, The Queen's Gambit and The Color of Money - and a collection of short stories, Far From Home. He died of lung cancer in 1984.
During his teaching tenure at Irvine High School in the early 1950s, Walter became a fixture in Estill County and was loved by his students and friends in the community. References and allusions to his time in Irvine have been immortalized in his writings, and this great author’s connection to our community will stand the test of time.
At the age of seventeen, Walter became a carpenter's mate in the Navy, serving on board the USS Hamil in Okinawa. After his discharge, he studied at the University of Kentucky where he received B.A. and M.A. degrees in English Literature and studied with Abe Guthrie, author of The Big Sky. Upon graduation he taught everything from the sciences and English to physical education in small-town Kentucky high schools. At that time he began writing short stories, which were published in The Saturday Evening Post, Esquire, Redbook, Cosmopolitan and Playboy. He wrote his first novel The Hustler, which was published in 1959 by Harper & Row and followed that with The Man Who Fell to Earth, which was published in 1963 by Gold Medal Books. He taught English Literature and Creative Writing at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio for fourteen years, where he was a distinguished Professor, and left that post in 1978 to come to New York and resume writing. He wrote four more novels - Mockingbird, The Steps of the Sun, The Queen's Gambit and The Color of Money - and a collection of short stories, Far From Home. He died of lung cancer in 1984.
During his teaching tenure at Irvine High School in the early 1950s, Walter became a fixture in Estill County and was loved by his students and friends in the community. References and allusions to his time in Irvine have been immortalized in his writings, and this great author’s connection to our community will stand the test of time.