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He is the author of eleven books. The first was chosen as one of the ten best sports books ever by Jonathan Yardley of The Washington Post. Norman Mailer said of his second book, "Page for page, Roy Blount is as funny as anyone I’ve read in a long time,” and Time Magazine placed Blount "in the tradition of the great curmudgeons like H.L. Mencken and W.C. Fields.” Garrison Keillor described his other works by saying "Roy Blount's stuff makes me laugh so hard, sometimes I have to go sit in a room and shut the door," and Playboy said he was "known to the critics as our next Mark Twain." Whether, on the one hand, it is his place to quote these plaudits and whether, on the other hand, he feels they are adequate, are questions that are not for him to answer at this time.
His one-man show at the American Place Theatre was described by The New Yorker as "the most humorous and engaging fifty minutes in town" - which, when you stop to think how may fifty minutes there are in New York at any given time, is saying something. He has also performed for Folk Tree concerts and at the Chet Atkins Celebrity Golf Tournament.
He has appeared regularly on Prairie Home Companion, on the “CBS Morning Show" and frequently on the "Tonight Show." He has also appeared on the "David Letterman Show," "Austin City Limits," "Good Morning America," the "Larry King Show," "All Things Considered" and many other radio and television programs.
He is a contributing editor of The Atlantic and Spy and has been a columnist for Esquire, The New York Times, Inside Sports, The Soho News, The Traveller, The San Francisco Examiner and The Atlanta Journal.
His essays, articles, stories, verses and even drawings have appeared in 102 different publications (not counting reprints) including The New Yorker, Playboy, Vanity Fair, GQ, Life, TV Guide, Vogue, Rolling Stone, National Geographic and Organic Gardening. His works have also appeared in 78 different books including The Best of Modern Humor, The Oxford Book of American Light Verse, The Norton Book of Light Verse, The Ultimate Baseball Book, Classic Southern Humor, Sudden Fiction and The Elvis Reader.
For Sports Illustrated, where he was a staff writer and associate editor from 1968-1975, he has rafted down the Amazon (attacked by piranha), played baseball with the 1969 Chicago Cubs (hit a ball 350 feet), become all but athletically a virtual member of the dynasty-years
Pittsburgh Steelersr, and hung out with Wilt Chamberlain, Yogi Berra, Reggie Jackson and the world’s oldest then-living life guard.
He has written for television and the movies (the only scene written by him that has actually been filmed - a song sung by Meryl Streep, Cher and Kurt Russell - wound up, like many film editors, on the cutting-room floor, but he will be glad to tell you about it in
detail). He has had two one-act plays produced in Louisville, Kentucky; one of them became part of an (awful) off Broadway review.
He has read or lectured at colleges from Williams to Clemson to Washington State; at the Poetry Center of the 92nd Street Y, Symphony Space, the Manhattan Theatre Club, San Francisco's City Arts and Lecture Series, the San Diego Forum and at conventions of
organizations ranging from the First Boston Corporation to Planned Parenthood.
He has reported on the Civil Rights Movement, the Ku Klux Klan, a Democratic National Convention, Saturday Night Live in its prime, Elvis’s funeral and any number of World Series and Super Bowls, and has interviewed Martin Luther King, Willie Nelson, Ray Charles,
Satchell Paige, Joe DiMaggio, Willie Mays, Loretta Lynn, Eudora Welty, Bill Murray, Billy Carter, Gilda Radner, Casey Stengel, Norman Thomas, Jonathan Demme and Sally Rand.
He has jumped out of a plane, gone through race car-driving school, hit a game-winning Texas Leaguer (and had limes thrown at him by fans) in Venezuela, and ridden a camel and a dolphin.
Born in 1941 to Southern parents in Indianapolis, raised in Georgia. Attended Vanderbilt (B.A. ‘63) and Harvard (M.A. ‘64). U.S. Army 1964-66, reporter and columnist for Atlanta Journal (and part-time English instructor at Georgia State College) 1966-68, staff writer Sports Illustrated 1968-79, freelance since. Lives in western Massachusetts and New York City. Father of two. Has no pets at present, but in the past has had dogs, cats, horse, rooster, snake, turtle, hamster, lizard, parakeet and hens.
He does not work birthday parties for children under eight. This policy has recently been clarified as follows: Some of the guests may be under eight, but not the person whose birthday it is.
The only reason he has made this rule about birthday parties is that sometimes when no one is eight or above, it gets too silly. He realizes that many young people under eight are not too silly, and he finds it unfortunate that the many have to suffer because of the few.
He has been right about Ronald Reagan all along.
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