Alcorn '84 Publishes First Book
Charles Alcorn is the managing editor of the American Book Review, a professor of English at the University of Houston and the possessor of a 2006 Ph.D. in English literature and fiction from the University of Houston’s creative writing program. He’s also a former ad copywriter and used to own a cigar company. Now he can add “author” to that resume, for Charlie has just published his first collection of short stories, “Argument Against the Good-Looking Corpse” (Huntsville: Texas Review Press).
A member of Washington and Lee’s Class of 1984, Charlie majored in geology, was a star linebacker on the football field, and threw the discus and the javelin. He says that he began one of the book’s stories, “Pipe Dreams,” while he was a student of Professor James Boatwright, who edited “Shenandoah: The Washington and Lee University Review.”
Of the eye-catching cover, the author writes that it’s a 1984 image of actress-model Brooke Shields — and of Charlie. He tells us “she came down to my hometown of Victoria on the Coastal Bend of Texas in 1984 with Bruce Weber for a New York Times magazine feature on ‘skin care in extreme climates.’ They needed locals. Luck had me home from college and quickly saddled up. I called her at Princeton a couple of weeks after the shoot to ask if she’d join me at Fancy Dress ball. She politely declined. Lovely girl.”
Read more about Charlie and his work at his website, charlesalcorn.com.
If you know any W&L alumni who would be great profile subjects, tell us about them! Nominate them for a web profile.
