Faculty Directory
Toby Thompson
Associate Professor of English
Contact:
114 Burrowes Building
University Park, PA 16802
Office Phone: 814-865-0026
cwt1@psu.edu
Office Hours:
Tuesday 2-3 and Wednesday 5-6:30
Educational History:
M.A. University of Virginia
B.A. University of Delaware
Research Interests:
Biography; memoir; and adventure travel
Awards:
National Endowment for the Arts grant in creative writing, 1982
Major Publications:
The 60's Report (Rawson Wade, 1979)
Saloon (Viking/Grossman, 1976)
Positively Main Street-An Unorthodox View of Bob Dylan (Coward McCann and Geohagen, 1971)
The Toughest Guys in Heaven (unpublished)
Other Publications:
My articles have appeared in Vanity Fair, Esquire, Playboy, Rolling Stone, Conde Nast Traveler, Diversion, GQ, Men's Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Village Voice, US Quarterly, Big Sky Journal, Outside, Sports Afield, The London Observer, Quest, Flatiron News, Crossroads, Tributary, and many other magazines, here and abroad.
National Professional Service:
Contributing editor to Big Sky Journal, in Bozeman, Montana. I have written of that state, regularly, for over thirty years. BSJ publishes the best writers of the Montana literary renaissance, and I help keep them in line.
Teaching Statement:
My writing classes focus on the literary development of the New Journalism (NJ), or Creative Nonfiction, as it currently is called. Students are taught the careful application of NJ techniques to their own nonfiction stories, while reading both current and past examples of the genre. I teach reporting as well as writing, and consider the Art of the Interview to be part of every course's agenda. Students write about the contemporary American scene, as well as their private, personal worlds.
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