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About Me: Professional Information |
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LEE GUTKIND
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
“A wild book—A crazy suspense story—fascinating stuff”—that’s how host Jon Stewart described Lee Gutkind’s new book, Almost Human: Making Robots Think on The Daily Show (Comedy Central Channel) when Gutkind and Stewart squared off in an amusing and enlightening conversation and debate. Gutkind’s national TV appearance followed in-depth interviews on National Public Radio’s “Talk of the Nation,” the BBC “World,” “Wired.com” and rave reviews from the Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times. Almost Human: Making Robots Think (W.W. Norton), his most recent book, documents six years of off and on fly-on-the-wall observation of the students and faculty at the Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute, as they imagine, design, build and test robots. It takes place in Pittsburgh at NASA bases and in the Atacama Desert in Chile, the place on earth most like Mars. Lee Gutkind is currently the Distinguished Writer in Residence at the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes and professor in the Hugh Downs School of Human Communication at Arizona State University. Gutkind is founder and editor of the popular journal, Creative Nonfiction, the first and largest literary journal to publish nonfiction, exclusively, now celebrating its 15th year of publication. He is editor of Best Creative Nonfiction, an annual anthology and author of Keep It Real: Everything You Need to Know About Researching and Writing Creative Nonfiction, both published by W.W. Norton. In all, Gutkind has written 15 books, and edited 18 collections and volumes in the past 25 years. In celebration of his impact on the genre, In Fact: The Best of Creative Nonfiction, was published in 2004 by W.W. Norton. Book List called In Fact “an electrifying anthology . . . an exciting and defining creative nonfiction primer.” In Fact is now in its fourth printing. Vanity Fair Magazine proclaimed Gutkind “the Godfather” behind the creative nonfiction movement, and Harper’s Magazine noted that he is “the leading figure behind the creative nonfiction movement.” Gutkind is the indisputable leader of the fastest growing genre in the publishing industry, for both academic and popular press. As a motorcyclist, a medical insider, a sailor, a college professor, a mid-life father and a literary whipping boy, Lee Gutkind proved to be an unlikely success, as he explains in his previous book, a collection of explosive and hilarious essays, Forever Fat: Essays by the Godfather. His upcoming book, entitled, Truckin’ with Sam: A Father and Son, The Mick and The Dyl, Rockin’ and Rollin’, On the Road, is a follow-up to his memoir Forever Fat. His immersion experiences into the motorcycle subculture, the organ transplant milieu, baseball umpires and in other heretofore un-mined worlds about which he has written books, along with the compelling literary techniques he has developed, has helped to create a new paradigm for writing about the world—the “literature of reality” that is creative nonfiction. MORE ABOUT LEE GUTKIND
All of Lee Gutkind’s books have been praised for being simultaneously personal and universally informative. His award-winning Many Sleepless Nights, an inside chronicle of the world of organ transplantation, has been reprinted in Italian, Korean and Japanese editions. An Unspoken Art, a profile of veterinary medicine, was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection. The University of Southern Illinois Press re-issued Gutkind's book (originally by Dial Press) about major league umpires, The Best Seat In Baseball, But You Have to Stand!, which USA Today called "unprecedented, revealing, startling and poignant." Gutkind frequently crosses genres as a writer, editor and reporter. He is a published novelist, an award-winning documentary filmmaker, and served as a consulting editor at National Public Radio in Washington, D.C. teaching narrative techniques to reporters, producers and editors on the Science Desk. Former director of the writing program at the University of Pittsburgh, Lee Gutkind has pioneered the teaching of creative nonfiction, conducting workshops and presenting readings throughout the United States, Europe, Australia and Israel. Gutkind founded the creative nonfiction program and MFA degree at the University of Pittsburgh, the first in the world. He helped found the low residency MFA program in creative nonfiction at Goucher College, and was director of the Mid-Atlantic Creative Nonfiction Writers’ Conference at Goucher for 11 years. He was the director and founder of the 412 Creative Nonfiction Literary Festival for four years, a citywide literary event that provides professional development to students and city residents and fosters the strength of the local writing community. Gutkind also served as the Virgina G. Piper Distinguished Writer in Residence at Arizona State University in 2007-2008. In 2004, Gutkind was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from Chatham College. LIST OF PUBLICATIONS
BOOKS WRITTEN BY LEE GUTKIND
Upcoming: Truckin’ With Sam: A Father and Son, The Mick and The Dyl, Rockin’ and Rollin’, On the Road, Late Spring, 2010, SUNY Press. Keep it Real: Everything You Need to Know About Researching and Writing Creative Nonfiction, 2008, W.W. Norton. Forever Fat: Essays by the Godfather, a memoir, 2003, University of Nebraska Press. BOOKS EDITED BY LEE GUTKIND
Upcoming: Becoming a Doctor: From Student to Specialist, Writer-Doctors Share Their Experiences, editor Lee Gutkind, W.W. Norton, March, 2010. Recent: Best Creative Nonfiction, Volume 2, the annual anthology, W.W. Norton, July, 2008. Anatomy of Baseball, editors Lee Gutkind and Andrew Blauner, and a Foreward by Yogi Berra, Texas A&M University Press, April, 2008. Hurricanes and Carnivals: Essays by Chicanos, Pochos, Pachucos, Mexicanos, and Expatriates, with Introduction by Lee Gutkind, editor, and a Foreword by Ilan Stavans, University of Arizona Press, March, 2007. Our Roots are Deep with Passion: Creative Nonfictions by Italian American Writers, with a Foreword by Joe Montegna and an Introduction by Lee Gutkind, co-edited with Joanna Clapps Herman. Other Press, distributed by W.W. Norton, 2006. A View from the Divide: Creative Nonfiction on Health and Science, anthology edited by Lee Gutkind, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1998. A PARTIAL LIST OF WORKSHOPS, READINGS, PRESENTATIONS, ETC.
-- The Panhandle Professional Writers’ Association, Amarillo, TX -- University of Pittsburgh, PA -- Arizona State University -- Carlow University, PA -- Fashion Institute of Technology, New York, NY -- Inland Northwest Center for Writers, Seattle, WA -- Creative Writers’ Conference, Pittsburgh, PA -- Council for the Written Word Workshop, Nashville, TN -- Bar-Ilan University, Jerusalem, Isreal -- Prague, Czech Republic -- Bruce Museum, Greenwich, CT -- Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. -- University of Akron, OH -- Sichuan University, Chengdu, China -- Florida International University -- University of Central Florida --The University of New Orleans --Suffolk University, Madrid, Spain --University of California, Riverside --The Writer’s Museum, Dublin, Ireland --Columbia College, Chicago --Ithaca College --University of New Mexico --Colorado State University --Hugo House, Seattle, WA --The University of Alaska --Artcore: Casper College, Casper, Wyoming --Nashville, Tennessee Community College --The Paris (France) Writer's Conference. --Harvard University --The Australian Associated Writing Program’s annual meeting --Geneva (Switzerland) Writers' Conference. --ABC TV's "Good Morning America." --American Society of Journalists and Authors. --The Poynter Institute's National Writers' Conference at the University of Oklahoma. --University of Southern Illinois. --The University of Wisconsin (Madison) --Westchester University. --Ursinus College. --University of Wyoming. --University of Nebraska. --Ohio State University --Drake University --St Edwards University --Loyola College. --Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. --The University of Maryland, College of Education. --Gannon College, Erie, PA. --The Franklin Institute Science Museum, Philadelphia, PA. --New York Academy of Medicine. --The Cooper Institute of the Humanities, Fort Lauderdale, FL. --Vanderbilt University Institute for Public Policy Studies. --Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ --State University of New York (SUNY) Buffalo, NY. --Oklahoma Arts Institute, Tulsa, OK. --The Freedom Forum, Arlington, VA. --The Federation of Families for Children's Mental Health. --Research and Training Center, Portland (Oregon) University. --National Mental Health Association, Washington, D.C. --The Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Department of Mental Health. --Association for the Care of Children's Health, Atlanta, GA. --American Orthopsychiatric Association, San Francisco, CA. ADDITIONAL HONORS AND AWARDS
Listed in WHO'S WHO IN THE WORLD, WHO'S WHO IN THE EAST, INTERNATIONAL MEN OF ACHIEVEMENT; INTERNATIONAL DIRECTORY OF DISTINGUISHED LEADERSHIP; WHO'S WHO IN AMERICAN PUBLISHING; WHO'S WHO IN AMERICAN EDUCATION. The Steve Allan Individual Award, by United Mental Health, Inc; Chancellor's Award for Public Service; Meritorious Service Award by American Council on Transplantation; Howard Blakeslee Award by the American Heart Association for "outstanding journalism; Golden Eagle Award by CINE, for the film, A Place Just Right; Recipient of National Endowment of the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship.
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