Thomas King (novelist)
| Thomas King | |
|---|---|
King in 2008
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| Born |
April 24, 1943 Sacramento, California, U.S. |
| Pen name | Hartley GoodWeather |
| Occupation | Writer, presenter, activist, academic |
| Citizenship | United States, Canada (dual) |
| Period | 1980s–present (as writer) |
| Genre | Postmodern, trickster novel; comedy and drama script |
| Subject | First Nations |
| Notable works | Medicine River; Green Grass, Running Water; The Truth about Stories |
| Notable awards | Order of Canada, 2004 |
Thomas King, CM (born April 24, 1943) is an American-Canadian writer and broadcast presenter who most often writes about North America's First Nations.
Thomas King was born in Sacramento, California in 1943, of Cherokee, German, and Greek descent. King says his father left the family when the boys were very young and that they were raised almost entirely by their mother. In his series of Massey Lectures, eventually published as a book The Truth About Stories (2003), King tells that after their father's death, he and his brother learned that their father had two other families, neither of whom knew about the third.
As a child, King attended grammar school in Roseville, California, and both private Catholic and public high schools. After flunking out of Sacramento State University, he joined the U.S. Navy for a brief period of time before receiving a medical discharge for a knee injury. Following this King worked several jobs, including as an ambulance driver, bank teller, and photojournalist in New Zealand for three years.
King eventually completed bachelor's and master's degrees from Chico State University in California. He moved to Utah, where he worked as a counselor for aboriginal students before completing a Ph.D. program in English at the University of Utah. His 1971 PhD dissertation was on Native Studies, one of the earliest of works to explore the oral storytelling tradition as literature. Around this time, King became interested in aboriginal oral traditions and storytelling.
After moving to Canada in 1980, King taught Native Studies at the University of Lethbridge (Alberta) in the early 1980s. He also served as a faculty member of the University of Minnesota's American Indian Studies Department. He is currently an English professor at the University of Guelph (Ontario) and lives in Guelph.
King was chosen to deliver the 2003 Massey Lectures, entitled The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative. King was the first Massey lecturer of self-identifying aboriginal descent. King explored the Native experience in oral stories, literature, history, religion and politics, popular culture and social protest in order to make sense of North America's relationship with its aboriginal peoples.
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