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Walter Stone Tevis Jr. (; February 28, 1928 – August 9, 1984) was an American novelist and screenwriter. Three of his six novels were adapted into major films: The Hustler, The Color of Money and The Man Who Fell to Earth. A fourth, The Queen’s Gambit, was adapted into a miniseries with the same title and shown on Netflix in 2020. His books have been translated into at least 18 languages.
He developed a Rheumatic fever, so his parents placed him in the Stanford Children's Convalescent home Forbes features Packard Children’s: From community care to a top-ranked children’s hospital healthier.stanfordchildrens.org, accessed December 5, 2020 Guide to the Children's Hospital at Stanford Records oac.cdlib.org, accessed December 5, 2020 Stanford University Medical Center Facilities Renewal and Replacement Project Draft Environmental Impact Report - Comment on the Draft Environmental Impact Report Cultural Resources Chapter www.cityofpaloalto.org, accessed December 5, 2020 (where he was given heavy doses of phenobarbital), for a year, during which time they returned to Kentucky, where the Tevis family had been given an early land grant in Madison County. Walter traveled across country alone by train at age 11 to rejoin his family in Kentucky. He made friends with Toby Kavanaugh, a fellow high school student, and learned to shoot pool in the Kavanaugh mansion in Lawrenceburg. An Interview with Walter Tevis brickmag.com, accessed December 5, 2020 In the library there, he read science fiction for the first time. 'The Queen’s Gambit': The True Story, Explained www.marieclaire.com, accessed December 5, 2020 They remained lifelong friends. Kavanaugh later became the owner of a pool room Walter Tevis: Recollections of "The Hustler" Jamie Griggs Tevis uknowledge.uky.edu, accessed December 5, 2020 in Lexington, which would have an impact on Tevis's writing.
Tevis joined the Navy on his seventeenth birthday. He became a carpenter's mate, serving on the USS Hamul in Okinawa.Walter S Tevis Junior in the U.S., World War II Navy Muster Rolls, 1938-1949, accessed via Ancestry.com
After his discharge, he graduated from Model Laboratory School in Kentucky in 1945. He entered the University of Kentucky, where he received B.A. (1949) and M.A. (1954) degrees in English literature and studied with A. B. Guthrie Jr., the author of The Big Sky. While a student there, Tevis worked in a pool hall and published a story about Pocket billiards written for Guthrie's class. He later attended the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where he received an MFA in creative writing in 1960.
After graduation, Tevis wrote for the Kentucky Highway Department. He taught classes in fields from the sciences and English to physical education in small-town Kentucky high schools in Science Hill, Hawesville, Irvine, and Carlisle. He also taught at Northern Kentucky University, the University of Kentucky, and Southern Connecticut State University.
Tevis taught English literature and creative writing at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, from 1965 to 1978, where he was named University Professor. Tevis was a member of the Authors Guild.
During his time teaching at Ohio University, Tevis became aware that the level of literacy among students was falling at an alarming rate. That observation gave him the idea for Mockingbird (1980), set in a grim and decaying New York City in the 25th century. The population is declining, no one can read, and robots rule over the drugged, illiterate humans. With the birth rate dropping, the end of the species seems a possibility. Tevis was a nominee for the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1980 for Mockingbird. During one of his last televised interviews, he revealed that PBS once planned a production of Mockingbird as a follow-up to their 1979 film of Ursula K. Le Guin's The Lathe of Heaven.
Tevis also wrote The Steps of the Sun (1983), The Queen's Gambit (1983), and The Color of Money (1984), a sequel to The Hustler. His short stories were collected in Far from Home in 1981.
Tevis was a frequent smoker, gambler and alcoholic, and his works often included these vices as central themes. Tevis took some of the money he earned from the movie rights to The Hustler and moved his family to Mexico, where he later claimed that he "stayed drunk for eight months." When Tevis was drinking, he couldn't write. According to his son Will, "Walter is the anti-hero of all his own books." Having a heart condition, Tevis was given phenobarbital at a young age. This is considered part of the inspiration for the character Beth Harmon in The Queen's Gambit, and according to Tevis, part of the reason for his later alcoholism. Tevis was able to overcome his alcohol habit in the 1970s with help from Alcoholics Anonymous.
Tevis spent his last years in New York City as a full-time writer, where he died of lung cancer in 1984. He was buried in Richmond, Kentucky. Walter Tevis carnegiecenterlex.org, accessed December 5, 2020
In 2003, Jamie Griggs Tevis published her autobiography, My Life with the Hustler. She died on August 4, 2006.
In 1983, Tevis married Eleanora Walker, later the trustee of the Walter Tevis Copyright Trust. She died December 9, 2016, at Bellevue Hospital in New York City, in an apparent suicide. Walter Tevis's literary output is represented by the Susan Schulman Literary Agency.
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