John Phelps Warnock

John Warnock was born and grew up in the American Southwest. After high school in Tucson he was educated in Massachusetts at Amherst College, in England at Oxford University, and in New York City at the New York University School of Law. For most of his working life, he was an English and Rhetoric professor, first at the University of Wyoming and then at the University of Arizona. In Laramie he performed in a bluegrass band that made two LP records. More about this in Beauty: The Making of a Custom Guitar. In his reading and writing, he is especially partial to literary nonfiction. Representing Reality: Explorations in Literary Nonfiction unfolds an account of that literary world and its challenges. He has taught for the Bread Loaf School of English in Burlington, Vermont; Santa Fe, New Mexico; Juneau, Alaska; and Asheville, North Carolina. He’s also done a good bit of consulting on legal writing for judges and lawyers in Canada and the US. The fruit of this work is found in Effective Writing: A Handbook with Stories for Lawyers. He believes that "place" emerges from "story." Tucson: A Drama in Time, called a “must read” by Tucson's mayor, unfolds from that belief. He has in progress major work about living through the nuclear arms race during the Cold War, the tentative title for which is The Altered Air. More about all of this, including a blog option, is available on his website at authorjohnwarnock.com. He is about to launch an online newsletter on Substack entitled You Might Want to Know (all about nuclear weapons).