ABOUT JOHN WARNOCK

John Warnock was born and grew up in Tucson, Arizona, and graduated from Tucson High School. He went on to get degrees from Amherst College in Massachusetts, Oxford University in England, and the New York University School of Law in New York City.

In 1968–69, he served as a law clerk to Richard Chambers, the Chief Judge in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. In 1969, he left law and lit out for Laramie, Wyoming. Later he taught for a good stretch in the English Department at the University of Wyoming in Laramie, returning to Tucson in 1990 to join the English Department and the graduate program in Rhetoric, Composition, and the Teaching of English at the University of Arizona. He is now Professor Emeritus at UA and lives in Tucson with his wife, Tilly.

During his time in Laramie (1969–1989), he played various instruments with a bluegrass band that over that time released two albums, Laramie (Mercury, 1970) and The Laramie Daily Record (Sun Country, 1979). He also loves and plays Mexican music.

Video introduction

The text below isn’t an exact transcript of the video but conveys the same information plus additional detail.

Hello. Thanks for clicking in.

I’m John Warnock, the author of the works on the site you’ve landed on. I hope readers of them will not hesitate to get in touch.

I thought I’d introduce myself here a little more for those who might be interested.

I was born in Tucson Arizona when it was a twentieth of the size it is today. I went to public schools in Tucson and graduated from Tucson High School in 1959. From there I went to Amherst College, a small liberal arts college in Massachusetts, Oxford University in England, and the New York University School of Law in New York City. I then clerked for year in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco. At the end of that year, I left law and went to Laramie Wyoming, where I ended up teaching in the Department of English at the University of Wyoming. In 1990, my wife Tilly and I moved to Tucson and joined the English Department at the University of Arizona, in a new kind of graduate program called Rhetoric, Composition, and the Teaching of English. RCTE concerned itself, as you probably guessed, with the teaching and learning of writing more than was traditional in contemporary English departments.

My law background and my academic study of rhetoric and writing informed the handbook I wrote with my father on effective writing in the practice of law. The interest I began to develop in literary nonfiction in the 1980’s, an interest that continues unabated today, informs the Representing Reality book. Tucson: A Drama in Time is informed by the interest I conceived in Tucson but not until Tilly and I came here in 1990, as well as my interest in new forms of literary nonfiction.

If you get a little further into this site, you will see a description of the work that I have spent the last fifteen years producing. (It is complete but has not yet been placed with a publisher.) It is a series of six books with the general title of The Altered Air: A Lived History the Nuclear Arms Race 1939-1989 and Roads Not Taken. The series is literary nonfiction of a new kind that combines memoir with actual history of the nuclear arms race. There’s a book for each decade, with the sixth book subtitled Roads Not Taken.

Thanks for your interest, and please be in touch through the contact form.