Photo: Anthony Loew

Roy Blount Jr. wears many hats: he is a humorist, sportswriter, poet, performer, lecturer, dramatist, and the author of twelve books. Raised in Decatur, Georgia, Blount received a bachelor's degree from Vanderbilt and a master's degree from Harvard. After a brief stint in the Army he worked as a reporter, columnist, and part-time English instructor in Atlanta before becoming a writer and editor for Sports Illustrated in 1968. In 1975 he left Sports Illustrated and, after publishing three articles in The Atlantic Monthly in 1981, became a contributing editor to the magazine the following year. In his writing for The Atlantic, Blount has reported on everything from the civil-rights movement to the Ku Klux Klan, from Saturday Night Live to Elvis's funeral. Blount has also worked on the stage; his one-man show at the American Palace Theatre -- later expanded into Roy Blount's Happy Hour and a Half -- was described by The New Yorker as "the most humorous and engaging fifty minutes in town."