Toby Thompson, Penn State Associate Professor of English, will offer a reading as part of the Mary E. Rolling Reading Series. The reading, which is free and open to the public, will be held virtually via Zoom at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, January 28, 2021 (link provided below).

Toby Thompson is the author of six books of nonfiction, including: Positively Main Street: Bob Dylan’s Minnesota; Saloon; The ’60s Report; Riding the Rough String: Reflections on the American West; and Metroliner – Passages: Washington to New York. Throughout his long career, Thompson has written for publications as diverse as Vanity Fair, Esquire, Rolling Stone, Gray’s Sporting Journal, GQ, Men’s Journal, Sports Afield, Playboy, Outside, Big Sky Journal, Western Art & Architecture, The New York Times, and The Washington Post.

His most recent book, Fired On: Targeting Western American Art, published in March 2020 by Bangtail Press, joins Riding the Rough String and Metroliner to complete a trilogy of collected pieces of reportorial nonfiction, personal essays, and profiles. The book, which takes its name from the 1907 oil painting by Frederic Remington, explores three centuries of art in Western America and paints a larger portrait of the West and its inhabitants.

Thompson describes the collection as “eclectic … comprised of brief lives and random asides, saloon tributes and artist profiles, book and music notices. The earliest was written in 1983, the latest in 2019.” Author Carl Hiaasen calls it a “…first-rate collection, impressively diverse and vastly enjoyable. Toby Thompson is blessed with that rare journalistic talent for painting epic pictures with small, unforgettable details.”

Thompson has taught nonfiction writing at Penn State for over 30 years. He divides his time between State College and his homes in Livingston, Montana, and Cabin John, Maryland.

The Mary E. Rolling Reading Series is a program offered by Penn State’s Creative Writing Program in English that receives generous support from the College of the Liberal Arts, the Department of English, the Joseph L. Grucci Poetry Endowment, the Mary E. Rolling Lectureship in Creative Writing, and University Libraries.

ZOOM Link for Thompson’s January 28 Reading at 7:30 pm:
https://psu.zoom.us/j/97769385641?pwd=WGRHbVRMVGRtMEdrL3lZbHJuellhZz09