Percival Everett

Percival Everett (born December 22, 1956) is an American writer and Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California.

He earned an M.A. in fiction from Brown University in 1982.

He now lives in Los Angeles, California.

While completing his M.A. degree, Everett wrote his first novel, Suder (1983).

His lead character was Craig Suder, a Seattle Mariners third baseman in a major league slump, both on and off the field.

Everett's second novel, Walk Me to the Distance (1985), features veteran David Larson after his return from Vietnam.

Larson becomes involved in a search for the developmentally disabled son of a sheep rancher in Slut's Whole, Wyoming.

The novel was later adapted, with an altered plot, as an ABC-TV movie entitled Follow Your Heart.

Cutting Lisa (1986; re-issued 2000) begins with John Livesey meeting a man who has performed a Caesarean section.

This prompts the protagonist to evaluate his relationships.

In 1987, Everett published The Weather and Women Treat Me Fair: Stories, a collection of short stories set mostly in the contemporary western United States.

In 1990, Everett published two books re-fashioning Greek myths: Zulus, which combines the grotesque and the apocalypse; and For Her Dark Skin, a new version of Medea by the Greek playwright Euripides.

Switching genres, Everett next wrote a children's book, The One That Got Away (1992).

This illustrated book for young readers follows three cowboys as they attempt to corral "ones", the mischievous numerals.

Returning to novels, Everett published his first book-length western, God's Country, in 1994.

In this novel, Curt Marder and his black tracker Bubba search "God's country" for Marder's wife, who has been kidnapped by bandits.

Marder is not sure whether he wants to find her.

The book is a parody of westerns and the politics of race and gender.

It includes a cross-dressing George Armstrong Custer.

In 1996, Everett published two books: Watershed has a contemporary western setting, in which the loner hydrologist Robert Hawkes meets a Native American "small person", who helps him come to terms with the inter-relation of people.

That year, Everett also published his second collection of stories, Big Picture.

In Frenzy (1997), Everett returned to Greek mythology.

Vlepo, Dionysos's assistant, is forced to undergo a "frenzy" of odd activities, including becoming lice and bedroom curtains at different times during the story, which he narrates.

These events occur so that he can explain these experiences to Dionysos, the demi-god.

Glyph (1999) is the story within a story of Ralph, a baby who chooses not to speak but has extraordinary muscle control and an IQ nearing 500.

He writes notes to his mother on a variety of literary topics based on books she supplies.

Ralph is kidnapped several times by parties trying to exploit his special skills.

His odyssey (as "written" by four-year-old Ralph) teaches him more about love than intellect.

He is best known for his novels Erasure (2001), I Am Not Sidney Poitier (2009), and The Trees (2021), which was shortlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize.

Erasure was adapted as the film American Fiction (2023), written and directed by Cord Jefferson, starring Jeffrey Wright, Sterling K. Brown, and Leslie Uggams.

Percival L. Everett, named after his father, was born in Fort Gordon, Georgia, where his father, Percival Leonard Everett, was a sergeant in the U.S. Army.

His mother was Dorothy (née Stinson) Everett.

When the younger Everett was still an infant, the family moved to Columbia, South Carolina, where the boy lived through high school.

He was the oldest of several children.

His father became a dentist and his parents continued to live in South Carolina.

The younger Everett eventually moved to the American West.

Everett earned a bachelors in philosophy from the University of Miami.

He studied a broad variety of topics including biochemistry and mathematical logic.

Grand Canyon, Inc. (2001) is Everett's first novella.

In it, Rhino Tanner attempts to tame Mother Nature with a commercialization of the Grand Canyon.