Arts, Entertainment & Media

Charles Scott Abbott (Knoxville ’78) is one of the two originators of the board game Trivial Pursuit. In January 1980, he and Chris Haney, along with John Haney and Ed Werner, formed Horn Abbot Ltd. to manufacture and sell the game. The first sets were sold in Canada in 1981.

Kathryn Arnold (Knoxville ’75) has been editor of the national magazine Yoga Journal since 1998. She previously worked for Working Woman and Savvy magazines.
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Marilou Awiakta (Knoxville ’58) has received international recognition for her writing, which blends her Cherokee and Appalachian heritage with science. A quote from her third book, Selu: Seeking the Cornmother's Wisdom is engraved in the River Wall of the Bicentennial Mall in Nashville; a poem from Selu appears on the Fine Arts Walkway at the University of California, Riverside; the audiotape of Selu was nominated for a 1996 Grammy Award. In 1985, the U.S. Information Agency chose her books Abiding Appalachia, Where Mountain and Atom Meet, and Rising Fawn and the Fire Mystery for the global tour of its exhibit, Women in the Contemporary World.

Full image Deanna Kay Carter (Knoxville ’89) won the Country Music Association Song of the Year award in 1997 for “Strawberry Wine.” She has had three number one country singles. Learn More

B. Tom Collins (Knoxville ’65) is a music executive. The first track he produced was Ronnie Malsap’s Where My Heart Is. He was musical director for the Barbara Mandrell Show. In 1982, he established Collins Music, and the company has received more than 100 BMI and ASCAP awards for its songs. In 1991, Collins Music acquired the Hallnote Music Catalog of Tom T. Hall, establishing itself as one of the major independent music publishers in the U.S.

Full image John Cullum (Knoxville ’53) is a Tony award winning actor. He won the top theater award for his roles in Shenandoah and On the Twentieth Century. He was the star of the television series Northern Exposure.

David Granger (Knoxville ’78) is editor-in-chief of Esquire magazine. Learn more.

Full image Tom Griscom (Chattanooga ’71)is publisher and executive editor of the Chattanooga Times Free Press. He is a former White House communication chief and former president of Ogilvy and Mather Public Affairs.

Bette Henritze attended UT from September 1944 to June 1946. She has a long and distinguished acting career in plays, movies, and television. Her movie credits include: The World According to Garp, Other People’s Money, Object of My Affection, and Brighton Beach Memoirs.  She has appeared in television shows such as NYPD Blue and Third Watch and more than 20 theater productions.

Robin Hood (Chattanooga ’66) won the Pulitzer Prize for photography in 1978.

David L. Keith (Knoxville ’85) has starred in films including An Officer and a Gentleman and the Lords of Discipline. He also has directed films and starred in made-for-TV movies.

Ron Kirksey (Knoxville ’70), a Clinton, Tennessee native, won the Pulitzer prize for public service journalism in 1994 as part of a team at the Akron (Ohio) Beacon Journal. Kirksey was lead writer.

Brandon Maggart (Knoxville ’56) is an actor, appearing on TV shows such as ER, Murder She Wrote, and LA Law. He has appeared in more than 20 films and also done theater, receiving a Tony nomination for his role in Applause.  He was in the original cast of Sesame Street.

Richard Marius (Knoxville ’54) was an author and director of the expository writing program at Harvard University. His Thomas More was nominated for a National Book Award. (deceased)

Joseph Walker McSpadden graduated from UT in the 1890s. He was a prolific author. He is best known for his Robin Hood (1891) and succeeding tales of Robin Hood, but among his other publications are Opera Synopses (1920), Shakesperian Synopses (1923), Stories from Great Operas (1923), California: A Romantic Story for Young People (1926), Boys’ Book of Famous Soldiers (1924), Famous Sculptors of America (1924) and Storm Center: A Novel About Andy Johnson (1947).(deceased)

Barry Moser is an artist who attended UT Chattanooga. He illustrated Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, which won the National Book Award for Design and Illustration in 1983. In 1991 he won the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for Appalachia, the Voices of Sleeping Birds.

Kenneth “Keith” Olsen (Knoxville ’80) has performed 67 major operatic roles and given 700 performances worldwide. He is a principal singer with Teatro alla Scala in Milan, Italy.

Park Overall is an actress who attended UT in Knoxville in 1976 and 1983. She was nominated for a Golden Globe for her role in the television series Empty Nest. She has also appeared in films.

Vince Staten (Knoxville ’73) has written several books of humor (Do Bald Men Get Half Price Haircuts? Do Pharmacists Sell Farms?). As a student columnist for the UT Daily Beacon, Staten was elected Homecoming Queen.

Full image Ann Tanner Taylor (Knoxville ’58) is a newscaster for National Public Radio.

Kurt Vonnegut, author of Player Piano, The Sirens of Titan, and Slaughterhouse Five (among other novels and short stories) attended UT from November 1943 until March  1944 as a participant in the Army Specialized Training Program. He returned to campus on April 10, 2001, to give a lecture as part of the Joseph Wood Krutch Lecture series, and indicated that his acceptance of the invitation to speak was largely to see the campus again.

Anna Catherine Wiley, who attended UT from 1895 to 1897, was an artist.  Her paintings have been exhibited at Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, National Academy of Design, and Cincinnati Museum of Art. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, owns one of her paintings. (deceased)

Carl Wolfson (Knoxville ‘75) is a comedian. His television credits include appearances on the Merv Griffin Show, An Evening at the Improv, Thicke of the Night, The Goodtime Cafe, The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers, The Late Show Starring Ross Shafer, Showtime Comedy Club Network, and Comedy Express.

Full image Lindsay Young (Knoxville ’35) was a Knoxville philanthropist. He was honored by UT with its Volunteer of the Year award in 2002. (deceased) Learn More

Edith Evans Asbury (Knoxville ’24) began a 52-year journalism career in 1929. She served on the staff of the Cincinnati Times Star, The Knoxville News Sentinel, The New York Post, Collier’s, the New York World Telegram and Sun, and for 29 years, The New York Times. Major stories she covered for The New York Times included Soviet Premier Nikita Krushchev’s 1959 tour of the United States and the civil rights movement in the South. She was one of twenty women journalists interviewed as part of the Washington Press Club Foundation’s oral history project “Women in Journalism.”

Paige Braddock (Knoxville ’85) is the creator of the nationally syndicated comic strip Jane’s World. She was a protégé of Peanuts creator Charles Schulz. Braddock earned a fine arts degree from UT Knoxville.

Clarence Leon Brown (Knoxville ’10), directed or produced 53 films, nine of which won Academy Awards. Brown and his wife, Marian, donated $12 million to the university’s theater department. The Clarence Brown Theater at UT in Knoxville is named in his honor. (deceased)

Dixie V. Carter attended UT from 1957 to 1959. She was best known for her role in the television series Family Law and Designing Women. She also has appeared in many plays, authored a book, and produced two fitness videos.

Ashley Cleveland, a graduate of UT Knoxville, is a Grammy-award winning singer. She won Grammys in both 1996 and 1999 for Best Rock Gospel Album.

Elizabeth Barks Coxattended UT Knoxville in 1960-61 and also attended UT Chattanooga before receiving the bachelor’s degree from the University of Mississippi in 1964. She is the author of novels Familiar Ground, The Ragged Way People Fall out of Love, The Slow Moon, and Night Talk. Night Talk won the 1998 Lillian Smith Book Award, given by the Southern Regional Council. She taught writing at Duke University for 17 years. She shares an endowed chair at Wofford College with her husband, Michael Curtis.

Lowell Cunningham (Knoxville ’85) is the creator of the Men in Black comic book that served as the basis for the Men in Black movies.

Owen Davis, an 1889 graduate, won the Pulitzer Prize for his play Icebound in 1923. (deceased)

James Denton ( Knoxville ’86) is an actor. He appears as Mike Delfino in the television series Desperate Housewives. He has appeared in other television series and several films.

Thomas Fulton (Knoxville ’71) conducted 21 operas at the Metropolitan Opera and made several recordings. He also conducted the Orchestre National de France and the orchestras of the Paris Opera and other houses in France and Germany. (deceased)

David Hall (Knoxville ’65, ’66) is former editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Denver Post.

John Netherland Heiskell (Knoxville 1893) was publisher and editor of the Arkansas Gazette from 1902 to 1972. Under his leadership, the Gazette won a Pulitzer Prize for meritorious public service. He received numerous national awards for journalistic excellence. (deceased)

James M. Hightower attended UT in Knoxville from 1927 to 1929. He won the Pulitzer Prize for journalism in 1952. (deceased)

May Justus attended summer courses in 1923, 1929, 1930, 1934, and 1938. She completed UT correspondence courses in 1929, 1930, 1934, 1935, and 1936. She was also enrolled in courses during the spring term for teachers in 1935. She was the author of 65 books for children and others. Five of her books published in the 1940s and 1950s were selections of the Literary Guild. Her papers and manuscripts are in the UT Special Collections Library. (deceased)

Joseph Wood Krutch (Knoxville ’15) was an author as well as drama critic and associate editor of The Nation. His The Measure of Man won the National Book Award for nonfiction in 1955. (deceased)

Jerry David Madden (Knoxville ’57) is an author of novels and short stories and an editor of textbooks. Two novels, Sharpshooter: A Novel of the Civil War and The Suicide’s Wife, were nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. He holds an endowed professorship in creative writing at Louisiana State University.
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Cormac McCarthy is a novelist who attended UT in Knoxville in 1951-52 and 1957-60. He won the National Book Award in 1992 for All the Pretty Horses and the Pulitzer Prize in 2007 for The Road.

Phillip W. Moffitt (Knoxville ’68, ’70) is the former editor-in-chief of Esquire Magazine. He is founder and president of the Life Balance Institute.
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Full image Barry Nolan (Knoxville ’69 )is an Emmy-award winning news anchor and host of Backstage with Barry Nolen on CN8, the Comcast Network. He appeared on NBC’s Evening Magazine and on Hard Copy. He has also appeared in films and television series. He attended UT as Walter Barett Smith. Learn More

Full image Dave Ramsey (Knoxville ’82) is the host of the nationally syndicated Dave Ramsey Show and author of Financial Peace.

Full image Cheryl Lynn Studer attended UT in Knoxville from 1975 to 1979. She is an internationally known soprano. She has sung in the world’s most prestigious opera houses including the Metropolitan Opera in New York and La Scala. Learn More

Pamela Yvonne Tillis attended UT Knoxville in 1979. She is a country music star and daughter of country music great Mel Tillis. She was Country Music Association 1994 female vocalist of the year. She won a Grammy in 1998, and has appeared on Broadway and in TV shows.

Jake Vest (Knoxville ’04) is a former nationally syndicated cartoonist (That’s Jake), writer, and columnist for the Orlando Sentinel. He did his UT coursework between 1969 and 1973.

Colin Randall Wilcox attended UT from 1953 to 1956.She has appeared in films (Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, Catch 22, To Kill a Mockingbird), on Broadway (Under the Yum Yum Tree, The Day the Money Stopped, Strange Interlude), and in television shows (Ironsides, Little House on the Prairie, Streets of San Francisco).

John Noble Wilford (Knoxville ’55) has won two Pulitzer Prizes for national reporting. He is science correspondent for the New York Times and founder of the paper’s weekly science section.

Edward Osborne Wilson, who attended UTK from 1950 to 1951, won two Pulitzer Prizes for nonfiction for his books On Human Nature and The Ants.

Full image Delores Ziegler (Knoxville ’79) is an opera singer who has performed with Luciano Pavarotti and with major U.S. and European symphonies.