Clay Reynolds
Native Texan novelist, scholar, and critic Clay Reynolds is the author more than eight hundred publications ranging from critical studies to short fiction and poems, essays, reviews and twelve published volumes. He has served as fiction editor for several literary magazines and as editorial consultant for publishers, bookstores, writer’s organizations, 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; Monuments also won the Violet Crown Award for 2000. Both novels were finalists for the Western Writers of America Spur Award, which has also recognized Reynolds’ short fiction; he has also been runner-up for both essay and fiction prizes from PEN and the Texas Institute of Letters, among other literary awards. He has received grants from the Texas Commission for the Arts and is also a National Endowment for the Arts Fellow.
Reynolds’ critical evaluations and feature articles have 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 widely anthologized. He frequently contributes book reviews and feature columns to several metropolitan newspapers; he is also a regular contributor to Publisher’s Weekly, and has written for Kirkus Reviews and The New York Times.
Reynolds holds academic degrees from the University of Texas at Austin (B.A.), Trinity University (M.A.), and the University of Tulsa (Ph.D.) and has thirty years of university teaching experience. He is Professor of Arts and Humanities at the University of Texas at Dallas and serves as the school’s Associate Dean for Undergraduate Studies. Previously, he served on the part time or visiting faculties of Texas Woman’s University, the University of South Dakota, West Texas A&M University Writer’s Workshop, Rice University’s Writer’s Festival and Professional Publishing Program, and Villanova University, where he was visiting writer-in-residence in 1994. Prior to these appointments, he served as a professor of English and Novelist-in-Residence at the University of North Texas; previously, he was on the faculty of Lamar University. He has given distinguished or named lectures at Iowa State University, The University of North Texas, Texas Christian University, Angelo State University, and the University of Texas at Dallas. 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. The Texas Commission for the Arts lists him on the Texas Literary Touring Program sponsored by the Writers’ League of Texas. He is a member of the Texas Institute of Letters and the National Faculty.
His published novels include The Vigil, Agatite, Franklin’s Crossing Players, Monuments, and The Tentmaker. His most recent books are Threading the Needle and Ars Poetica. His nonfiction books include Stage Left: The Development of the American Social Drama, Taking Stock: A Larry McMurtry Casebook, A Hundred Years of Heroes: A Centennial History of the Southwestern Exposition and Livestock Show, Twenty Questions: Answers for the Inquiring Writer, and The Plays of Jack London. Texas Tech University Press is publishing a series of trade reprints all set in the same Texas location and called The Sandhill Chronicles; Reynolds has written screenplays of Players and The Vigil and Monuments, as well as adaptations of some of his short fiction, and several of his novels remain under option to various motion picture companies.
Reynolds lives in Lowry’s Crossing, a community near McKinney, Texas, with his wife Judy, a Medical Technologist at Denton Community Hospital; his son, Wesley, is a graduate student at Colorado School of Mines; his daughter, Virginia, is a graduate of the University of San Diego.