Clay Reynolds
Amarillo Bay Director
Native Texan novelist, scholar, and critic Clay Reynolds is the author of more than five hundred publications ranging from critical studies to novels to book reviews. Among his critical works is a study of fellow Texas author and Pulitzer Prize winner, Larry McMurtry. He additionally has served as fiction editor for several magazines and as editorial consultant for several university and small presses, bookstores, and individual writers.
Reynolds' third novel, Franklin's Crossing, was entered into the Pulitzer Prize competition for 1992; it also received the Violet Crown Award for fiction as well as other awards and honors; he has been named runner-up twice in the Western Writers of America Spur and runner-up for both essay and fiction prizes from PEN Texas. He has received grants from the Texas Commission for the Arts and is also a National Endowment for the Arts fellow.
His nonfiction work has appeared in several national magazines, including Chronicles, American Way, and Texas Monthly; his short fiction has been published in Writers' Forum, South Dakota Review, High Plains Literary Review, and Cimarron Review, among other publications, and has been anthologized in such collections as Careless Weeds, New Growth (1&2), Higher Elevations, and That's What I Like (About the South) and Other Stories, and Texas Short Fiction I & II. He regularly contributes book reviews and feature columns to such newspapers as The Dallas Morning News, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Houston Chronicle, The Fort Worth Star Telegram, and The San Antonio Express- News, and is also a contributor to such review publications as Texas Books in Review, Kirkus Reviews, and Publisher's Weekly.
Reynolds has more than twenty years of university and college teaching experience. In the fall of 1998, he joined the University of Texas at Dallas' faculty as associate professor of aesthetics and writing. In addition, he regularly conducts formal workshops and lectures on writing and the business of writing for both community writing groups and university and collegiate programs. In 1996, he taught Ethnic American Literature for Texas Woman's University's cooperative education program in conjunction with the Dallas Independent School District; in 1995, he worked as visiting writer and consultant to the University of South Dakota creative writing program; the previous summer, he served as a visiting professor of creative writing for the West Texas A&M University Writer's Workshop. In the spring of 1994, Reynolds was visiting professor of English and writer in residence at Villanova University; he served for several years on the program of the Rice University Continuing Education writer's workshop and has been a guest lecturer for the Rice University Publishing Program. He is listed on the Texas Literary Touring Program sponsored by the Texas Commission for the Arts and the Austin Writers League.
He previously served as a professor of English and Novelist in Residence on the faculty of the University of North Texas and Lamar University. Reynolds holds academic degrees from the University of Texas at Austin (B.A.), Trinity University (M.A.), and the University of Tulsa (Ph.D.). He is a member of the Texas Institute of Letters, the Author's Guild, PEN West, and Western Writers of America.
His published novels include The Vigil (St. Martin's Press & SMU Press), Agatite (St. Martin's Press; re-released as Rage, Signet), and Franklin's Crossing (Dutton & Signet), and Players (Carroll & Graf, Pinnacle). His nonfiction books include Stage Left: The Development of the American Social Drama (the Whitston Press), Taking Stock: A Larry McMurtry Casebook (SMU Press), A Hundred Years of Heroes: A Centennial History of the Southwestern Exposition and Livestock Show (TCU Press), Twenty Questions: Answers for the Inquiring Writer (Browder Springs), and, as Hunter Lundy, Let Us Prey. Agatite/Rage has been optioned for motion picture by Benjamin Mouton and Associates. The Vigil, Players, and an unpublished novel, Monuments, have been optioned for film by Daydream Entertainment in Hollywood. Reynolds has written screenplays of both Players and The Vigil.
An avid baseball fan, Reynolds lives in Denton with his wife Judy, a Medical Technologist at Denton Community Hospital, and his daughter, Virginia, a student at Ryan High School. Reynolds' son, Wesley, is a student at Colorado School of Mines.
Book List
Stage Left: The Development of the American Social Drama in the Thirties--The Whitston Press
The Vigil--SMU Press (Distributed by Texas A&M; First pub: St. Martin's Press)
Rage--NAL/Signet First pub (as Agatite: St. Martin's Press)
Franklin's Crossing--NAL/Signet (First pub. Dutton Publishers)
Taking Stock: A Larry McMurtry Casebook--SMU Press
A Hundred Years of Heroes: A Centennial History of the Southwestern Exposition and Livestock--Show. TCU Press.
Players--Carroll and Graf
Twenty Questions: Answers for the Inquiring Writer--Browder Springs
[As Hunter Lundy] Let Us Prey--Genesis Press
Copyright © 1999-2008 by Amarillo Bay. All rights reserved.