This Goodly Land

Michael Knight (December 15, 1969–present)

Alabama Connections

• Mobile, Mobile County: birthplace, childhood residence

Selected Works

• Knight, Michael. Dogfight and Other Stories. New York: Plume, 1998.
• Knight, Michael. Divining Rod. New York: Dutton, 1998.
• Knight, Michael. Goodnight, Nobody. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2003.
• Knight, Michael. The Holiday Season. New York: Grove Press, 2007.

Literary Awards

• Winner, College Fiction Contest, Playboy Magazine, 1996, for "Gerald's Monkey"
• New Writing Award for Fiction, Fellowship of Southern Writers, 1999

Biographical Information

Michael Knight was born and grew up in Mobile, Ala. He began writing stories when he was a child and published some of them in his high school’s literary journal. Knight attended Hampden-Sydney College near Farmville, Va., graduating with a BA in 1992. He had originally planned to go to law school, but one of his teachers encouraged him to enroll at the University of Southern Mississippi Center for Writers, in Hattiesburg, where he earned an MA in Contemporary Fiction in 1994. He continued his studies at the University of Virginia, earning an MFA in Creative Writing in 1996. Knight began publishing in literary journals in 1995. The following year, he won the Playboy Magazine College Fiction Contest with his story “Gerald’s Monkey.”

After graduating from the University of Virginia, Knight taught for a year at the Gilman School in Baltimore, Md., and for a year at Hollins College in Roanoke, Va. In 1998, he published a novel and a collection of short stories, and one of his stories, “Birdland,” was published in The New Yorker. Knight joined the faculty of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, in 1999 and now serves as the director of their creative writing program. A second collection of his short stories was published in 2003. Knight spent a year in Oxford, Miss., as the 2005-06 John and Renee Grisham Emerging Southern Writer at the University of Mississippi.

Interests and Themes

Michael Knight writes fiction about modern relationships--romantic, familial, and community-based. Many of his stories are set in Alabama.

For More Information

Please check your local library for these materials. If items are not available locally, your librarian can help you borrow them through the InterLibrary Loan program. Your librarian can also help you find other information about this author.

There may be more information available through the databases in the Alabama Virtual Library. If you are an Alabama citizen, AVL can be used at your public library or school library media center. You can also get a username and password from your librarian to use AVL at home.

Reference Articles

• Conway, Glenda. "Michael Knight: Staggering Good Luck". First Draft Summer. 2002: 5, 8.
• Knight, Michael. "Rowan Oak and the Art of Deception". First Draft Fall. 2006: 10-11.

Reference Web Sites

• Massengill, Reed. "A Knight's Tale". Tennessee Alumnus Magazine. 2003. University of Tennessee. http://pr.tennessee.edu/alumnus/alumarticle.asp?id=442.

Photo courtesy of the Caroline Marshall Draughon Center for the Arts & Humanities in the College of Liberal Arts, Auburn University.

Last updated on May 30, 2008.