Colin McEnroe

Born in Hartford, 1954. Honors graduate from the Kingswood-Oxford School (1972) and Yale University (1976). Hartford Courant reporter and columnist from 1976 to present (with one brief interruption in 1995-96). Columns have won numerous national awards and appeared, though syndication and wire service distribution, in hundreds of newspapers across the U.S. and elsewhere in the world. Columns also appear in several anthologies of humor writing and prose. Author of three books: "Swimming Chickens," Doubleday, 1987. "Lose Weight Through Great Sex With Celebrities," Doubleday, 1989. "My Father's Footprints," 2003, Warner. Radio talk show host of "The Colin McEnroe Show" on WNPR-FM, Connecticut Public Radio. Show airs weekdays from 1 to 2 p.m. Before that with WTIC-AM, Infinity-owned, CBS affiliate for 16 years -- ending Dec. 31, 2008. Free-lance journalist. Currently a weekly columnist in the Sunday edition of the Hartford Courant . Has been a contributing editor at Best Life, Men's Health, at Mirabella for its first two years (1989-91) and at Mademoiselle during the mid-1990s. Currently writes a column for newbie cyclists in Bicycling. Has also written for the New York Times Op-Ed Page, Cosmopolitan, McSweeneys, The Funny Times, Forbes FYI, Backpacker and perhaps a dozen other magazines. The digital world. In 1999, before the word "blog" was in vogue, McEnroe started a diary-style feature on the digital platform of the Hartford Courant. Also in that year, he wrote an essay published in the monograph for the American Press Institute's "Design 2020: Vision of the newspaper of the future." In it, he correctly predicted many of the changes that would face the industry in the coming decade. "Newspapers are not dead," McEnroe wrote, "but the thing that flops on your lawn once a day, seven days a week, probably is." McEnroe came back on the Courant's platform in 2005 with a new blog called To Wit. To Wit was voted Best Blog in the Hartford Advocate's Readers Poll for 2009. Teaching. Two stints as an adjunct professor at Trinity College in Hartford. In the second, teaching graduate seminars, he has alternated between courses on the digital world and courses on mass media's coverage of American politics. He developed a teaching style in which each seminar student creates a blog, posts all homework there and has access to the blogs of all fellow students. Other teachers at Trinity are now trying this format. In 2009, he taught a new course called ""McLuhan 5.0," looking at the struggles of old media and the rise of new models. Playwright. "A Woman of a Certain Age," with book by McEnroe and songs by Steve Metcalf and Lary Bloom was produced in May, 2003, at the Ivoryton Playhouse. Public Speaker. Widely known for speeches and lectures, both humorous and serious, usually both. He has also developed a strong reputation as a moderator, bringing out the best in panels that included Kurt Vonnegut, Salman Rushdie, Joyce Carol Oates, Amy Tan, Andy Rooney, Lesley Stahl, Morley Safer, P.J. O'Rourke, Mort Sahl, the writers and voices of "The Simpsons," Sinbad, Joy Behar, Molly Ivins, Anita Hill and Ray Suarez. Hundreds of other speaking appearances at writer's conferences, graduations, library groups and the prestigious winter lecture series at Wood's Hole on Cape Cod. Work with orchestras. After performing spoken word parts with several orchestras, McEnroe began work, with conductor Edward Cumming, on a new series of concerts with the Hartford Symphony. These "Classical Connections" concerts incorporate work from other disciplines to shed light on each composer and attempt also to create a conversation among the conductor, narrator, audience, soloists and orchestra players.