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Daniel Wallace
"Author, Artist, Alligator Wrangler"
If you Google Daniel Wallace, author of Big Fish: A Novel
of Mythic Proportions, you'll likely find this eclectic description
- a fitting title indicative of Wallace's whymsical, imaginative
storytelling. Even the writer's website (www.danielwallace.org)
is illustrated by Wallace himself, including such conversational
and witty musings that you may find yourself wishing he was your
fishing buddy.
Perhaps this explains why Wallace's fiction is so popular. He's
literary without being stuffy or difficult - a style that is all
at once literary and popular. Despite its literary tone, his prose
is easy and approachable. Wallace's narratives are delivered with
a tone that is more akin to someone sitting on the back porch
by the banks of the river, tying together stories as a fisherman
would lures.
Daniel Wallace, master craftsman of words, will be in Gadsden
March 14th & 15th as our writer in residence for the One Book,
One Communtiy - Gadsden Reads project. His book Big Fish
has been the focus of the year-long project.
Click below to watch Daniel at Gadsden State Community College
Big
Fish by Daniel Wallace in Wallace Hall
Big
Fish by Daniel Wallace in the GSCC Library
Big Praise for Big Fish
"Big Fish is going to make a very big splash! It's got everything:
heart, wonderful writing, and accessibility . . . A very special
novel which may well become a classic."
- -Lee Smith, author of News of the Spirit.
"In this first novel, Daniel Wallace...adds legends and
folk tales from the Southern backwoods, throws in a smattering
of Greek myth and attaches a few of his own inventions. Applying
all of these...resulted in a story that is both comic and poignant."
- - New York Times Book Review
William G. Doty
Professor (ret.), writer, translator, and editor
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William G. Doty is a retired professor of Humanities/Religious
Studies at the University of Alabama/Tuscaloosa. A prolific writer,
translator, and editor, he has published 21 books and over 75
essays in a wide range of journals. He served from 1987-94 as
the national coordinator for the yearly American Academy of Religion
competition for the best book in the field, and as a judge of
Research Grants for the AAR from 1996-2002. He has received grants
and fellowships from the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, the National
Endowment for the Humanities, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation,
B'nai Brith, The Foundation for the Improvement of Postsecondary
Education, the Ford Foundation, and the Society for Values in
Higher Education. In 1991 he received the Distinguished Alumni
Award from the Graduate School of Drew University and in 1997-98
he was the Goodwin-Philpott Eminent Scholar, Program in Religious
Studies in the Department of History, Auburn University.
A frequent lecturer and consultant on college campuses, Doty
has edited with Julie Thompson Klein two studies of interdisciplinary
education, Interdisciplinary Resources and Interdisciplinary Studies
Today, and with Robert Detweiler, a volume of essays on a short
story by Margaret Atwood, The Daemonic Imagination: Biblical Text
and Secular Story. With Wendell Beane he edited the two-volume
Myths, Rites, Symbols: A Mircea Eliade Reader, and with William
Hynes, he edited and contributed to The Mythical Trickster Figure:
Contours, Contexts, and Criticisms. His Myths of Masculinity was
published in 1993, Mythography: The Study of Myths and Rituals,
1986, appeared in 2nd edition in 2000; Myth: A Handbook appeared
in the Greenwood Folklore Handbooks series in 2004. He is also
editor of and contributor to Picturing Cultural Values in Postmodern
America, 1994, and general editor of The TIMES World Mythology
(London: TIMES Books-HarperCollins) [World Mythology (New York:
Barnes & Noble)].
From 1994 to 2001, Doty edited Mythosphere: A Journal for Image,
Myth, and Symbol. Projects underway include studies of myths and
rituals of Native North America; origin, emergenc, and creation
myths, the grotesque male body in postmodernist art; and various
essays in classics, mythology, psychology, iconography, and literature,
as well as another volume of myth studies.
Larry A. Gray
Assistant Professor of English
Larry A. Gray has been Assistant Professor of English at Jacksonville
State University since 2004. His academic degrees are from the
University of Virginia (Ph.D., M.A.) and Rhodes College (B.A.)
in Memphis. He spent his early years in such diverse places as
Cleveland, Guam, and Rhode Island, as determined by his father's
career in the Navy. His parents, Jack E. Gray and Jean Gillespie
Gray, are originally from Gadsden, where they met in high school
and where they were married several years later; they still revisit
often.
Dr. Don Noble
Professor and Author
Dr. Don Noble holds the Ph.D. from UNC-Chapel Hill and is Professor
Emeritus of English and Adjunct Professor of Journalism at the
University of Alabama. Noble taught English at the University
of Alabama for 32 years and was the recipient of the Eugene Curant
Award for outstanding college English teachers in Alabama. In
addition to being honored for teaching excellence, Dr. Noble received
an Emmy in recognition for his writing of the documentary screenplay
"I'm in the Truth Business: William Bradford Huie. Noble
has also been a familiar face and voice on Alabama Public Television
and Radio since the late 1980's with his literary shows "Bookmark"
and "Alabama Bound."
During his years in Alabama Public Television and Radio, Dr.
Noble has interviewed such literary legends as James Dickey, John
Barth, Peter Taylor, Ray Bradbury, Shirley Ann Grau, and Anne
Rivers Siddons. "Whenever possible we've tried to promote
Alabama authors," says Noble. "We've talked to Vicki
and Dennis Covington, Mark Childress, Madison Jones, Eugene Walter,
Elise Sanguinetti, Bob Inman, Howell Raines, Gay Talese, Don Keith,
and Albert Murray, just to name a few." Dr. Noble currently
hosts a series on Alabama Public Television in which he conducts
in-depth interviews with writers. "Bookmark," nearing
its 200th episode, airs on APT Sunday afternoons at 1:30.
Dr. Noble is the editor of Hemingway: A Revaluation, The
Steinbeck Question: New Essays in Criticism, The Rising South
(with Joab L. Thomas), and A Century Hence (by George
Tucker). His most recent works include Climbing Mt. Cheaha:
Stories from Emerging Alabama Writers and Zelda and Scott/Scott
and Zelda: Essays on the Fitzgeralds' Life, Work and Times.
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