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Career Achievement Award - 2008

David Hunter

The Knoxville Writers' Guild has named novelist, columnist and memoir writer David Hunter winner of its 2008 Career Achievement Award, one of its highest accolades.

Presentation of the award will be a highlight of the Guild’s Spring Gala at St. James Episcopal Church, 1101 Broadway, from 2-6 p.m. on Saturday, April 26. That event will include a community seminar and panel discussion called “Writing in the 22nd Century: Technology We Must Know”, and a celebration following with awards presentations and music by Kelle Jolly and Friends.

The Career Achievement Award is a salute to the full body of a writer’s work which spans a career. Past recipients include: Carson Brewer, George Scarbrough, Wilma Dykeman, Jon Manchip White and Jeff Daniel Marion.

Hunter’s work of the past 30 years includes 15 published books, numerous magazine and newspaper articles and a weekly opinion column that appears in the Knoxville News-Sentinel on Mondays.

“David is a wonderfully fresh and honest writer whose shrewd insights are softened by genuine humility. The combination makes him a delight to read year after year,” said News-Sentinel Editor Jack McElroy. Hunter also has written for the Knoxville Journal on such topics as unions, literacy, higher wages for civil employees, and animal rights. Ina Hughs recently wrote about Hunter and his writing career: Writer’s consistent style earns him Knoxville’s Career Achievement Award (Knoxville News-Sentinel, April 13, 2008).

Hunter is a medically retired police officer who wrote many of his books while working as a policeman, five in a genre he pioneered, the short, autobiographical, creative-nonfiction police essay. Among these is The Night is Mine (Tellico Books, an imprint of Robert Cumming’s Iris Publishing Group).

Others from that period are Black Friday Coming Down, There Was Blood on the Snow, The Night is Mine and The Archangel Caper. New York Times Bestselling author Sharyn McCrumb has said that Hunter is "the writer that crime novelists read to see what's really happening on the streets."

His most recent book is a collection of short stories called Things to do in Knoxville When You're Dead, which like his earlier memoir, Trailer Trash from Tennessee, is also published by Tellico Books.

His novels include The Jigsaw Man, based on a sensational case in Knoxville, The Homicide Game and The Dancing Savior, which author Steven Womack describes as follows: "Imagine One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest as a cop novel... Lyrical and poetic, yet tough and gritty, Hunter's story of one cop's journey to redemption is both moving and haunting."

KWG selection committee members cited Hunter’s creative style and consistent output as a writer. “He influenced a lot of writers with his early books at a time when lots of people hereabouts--outside of academia--didn't know anyone else personally who'd ever had a book published. He sort of invented a genre—the short-short creative nonfiction cop confessional,” said Don Williams, essayist, publisher and, like Hunter, a founding KWG member. Williams will present the award to Hunter at the gala.

“He has a large body of work in several genres; his detective novels are considered cult classics,” said playwright and poet Laura Still.

The KWG Spring Gala will be at St. James Episcopal Church, 1101 Broadway. Panelists for the seminar on emerging media technology will include Allen Wright, president of Focus Media Concepts, Inc.; Katie Allison Granju, nationally noted blogger and online producer at WBIR.com, and Cyn Mobley, a USA Today bestselling author and proprietor of Greyhound Books and Bushido Press.

Tickets to the Spring Gala, which will include the seminar and panel discussion, are $35 or $20 for the Gala Celebration and awards ceremonies only. Tickets for students are $15 and include both events. The seminar is 2-4 p.m. The Gala celebration is 4-6 p.m. For more information, go to www.knoxvillewritersguild.org or email Pam Strickland at pamstrickland@mac.com or call (865) 386-0805.

Tickets may be purchased from Guild members or at the Guild website. Proceeds will go to provide scholarships to the KWG annual Summer Writers’ Workshops.

The Knoxville Writers’ Guild is a 15-year-old local nonprofit organization that encourages local writers via monthly meetings at the Laurel Theatre, periodic workshops and classes, yearly contests and publishing anthologies. It has an open membership policy.

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2008 Contest Winners (to be announced at the Gala)