home > speaker biographies
speaker biographies

Speaker CALVIN TRILLIN Subjects humor, media & journalism      Video Clip

Calvin Trillin has been acclaimed in fields of writing that are remarkably diverse.  As someone who has published solidly reported pieces in The New Yorker for thirty years, he has been called "perhaps the finest reporter in America".  His antic commentary on the American scene- which now appears weekly in Time magazine, and his books chronicling his adventures as a "happy eater" have earned him renown as  "a classic American humorist".  His best-selling book Remembering Denny was hailed as "an elegiac, disturbing and altogether brilliant memoir".

Trillin began his career as a writer for Time and then became a staff writer for The New Yorker, and then a columnist for The Nation.  There he wrote what USA Today called "simply the funniest regular column in journalism".  That column became syndicated from 1986 through 1995.  In 1996, he returned to Time as a weekly columnist.  To date the column has been collected in five books.

His most recent book, Messages From My Father, which was published in 1996 as has become a best-seller.  This is his 19th book.  So far, his work has included two comic novels, a collection of short stories, a travel book, an account of desegregation at The University of Georgia, family memoirs, and three antic books on eating - American Fried, Alice- Lets Eat, and Third Helpings, - which have been compiled into a single volume called "The Tummy Trilogy"

He lectures widely and has appeared often as a guest on such television programs as "Good Morning America", "The Today Show" and "Latenight with David Letterman".  He has written and presented two one man shows at the American Palace Theatre in New York- both of them critically acclaimed and sell-outs.  In reviewing the second show The New York Times called Trillin "the Buster Keaton of performance humorists".

56 Poquonock Avenue Windsor, Connecticut 06095  Voice: 800-875-2893    Fax: 860-687-1062