Calvin Trillin

Calvin Trillin, a staff writer, has contributed to The New Yorker since 1963, when the magazine published “An Education in Georgia,” his account of the desegregation of the University of Georgia. He has published more than four hundred pieces in The New Yorker, including comic casuals and a wide variety of nonfiction. Between 1967 and 1982, he reported throughout the United States for a column called U.S. Journal. He has published two collections based on this series, “U.S. Journal” (1971) and “Killings” (1984, reissued with additional material in 2017). He followed U.S. Journal with a series of longer narrative pieces under the heading American Chronicles. A collection of these pieces, “American Stories,” was published in 1991.

After serving in the Army, Trillin joined Time, spending a year in the magazine’s Atlanta bureau covering the civil-rights struggle. After returning from the South, in 1961, he wrote for Time in New York, an experience that served as background for his comic novel “Floater” (1980). He wrote a column for Time from 1996 to 2001.

From 1978 to 1985, Trillin wrote a nationally syndicated humor column for The Nation, for which he continues to contribute comic verse. His humor columns have been collected in five books: “Uncivil Liberties” (1982), “With All Disrespect” (1985), “If You Can’t Say Something Nice” (1987), “Enough’s Enough” (1990), and “Too Soon to Tell” (1995). He has also published four best-selling books of political verse, and, in 2016, he published a book of children’s verse called “No Fair! No Fair!,” with illustrations by Roz Chast. His humor collection “Quite Enough of Calvin Trillin” won the Thurber Prize for American Humor in 2012.

In total, Trillin has published thirty-one books, including two other comic novels—“Runestruck” (1977) and “Tepper Isn’t Going Out” (2001)—and a collection of his pieces on race spanning fifty years, “Jackson, 1964” (2016). He has published three memoirs: “Remembering Denny” (1993), about a college classmate; “Messages from My Father” (1996); and “About Alice” (2005). His writings about eating have been published in four books: “American Fried” (1974), “Alice, Let’s Eat” (1978), “Third Helpings” (1983), and “Feeding a Yen” (2004).

Trillin’s first one-man show, “Calvin Trillin’s Uncle Sam,” was presented at the American Place Theatre, in New York, in 1988. His second show, “Words, No Music,” was produced in 1990. His play “About Alice,” an adaptation of the memoir, was produced by Theatre for a New Audience in 2019.