Calvin Trillin
Trillin in 2011
Born	Calvin Marshall Trillin (1935-12-05)December 5, 1935 (age 89) Kansas City, Missouri, U.S.
Education	Yale University (BA)
Spouse	Alice Stewart Trillin ​ ​ (m. 1965; died 2001)​
Children	2
Awards	2013,Thurber Prize for American Humor

Calvin Marshall Trillin (born December 5, 1935) is an Americanjournalist,humorist, food writer, poet, memoirist andnovelist.^[1] He is a winner of theThurber Prize for American Humor (2012) and an elected member of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Letters (2008).

Calvin Trillin was born in Kansas City, Missouri in 1935 to Edythe and Abe Trillin.^[2] In his bookMessages from My Father, he said his parents called him "Buddy".^[3] Raised Jewish,^[4] he attended public schools in Kansas City, graduated fromSouthwest High School, and went on toYale University, where he was the roommate and friend ofPeter M. Wolf (for whose 2013 memoir,My New Orleans, Gone Away, he wrote a humorous foreword), and where he served as chair of theYale Daily News and was a member of the Pundits andScroll and Key before graduating in 1957;^[5] he later served as aFellow of theUniversity.

After serving in theU.S. Army, Trillin worked as a reporter forTime magazine, then joined the staff ofThe New Yorker in 1963.^[6] He wrote the magazine's "U.S. Journal" series from 1967 to 1982, covering local events both serious and quirky throughout the United States. His reporting for the magazine on theracial integration of theUniversity of Georgia was published in his first book,An Education in Georgia (1964).

From 1975 to 1987, Trillin contributed articles toMoment,^[7] an independent magazine which focuses on the life of the American Jewish community.

Trillin also writes forThe Nation. He began in 1978 with a column called "Variations", which was eventually renamed "Uncivil Liberties"; it ran through 1985. The same name was used for the column when it was syndicated weekly in newspapers, from 1986 to 1995, and essentially the same column ran (without a name) inTime from 1996 to 2001. His humor columns forThe Nation during the 1980s and 1990s often made fun of then-editorVictor Navasky, whom he jokingly referred to asthe wily and parsimonious Navasky. (He once wrote that the magazine paid "in the high two figures.") Since July 1990, Trillin has written humorous poems about current events as part of his weekly "Deadline Poet" column inThe Nation.

Family, travel and food are major themes in Trillin's work. Three of his books on food —American Fried (1974),Alice, Let's Eat (1978) andThird Helpings (1983) — were collected in the 1994 compendiumThe Tummy Trilogy. Trillin has also written several autobiographical books and magazine articles, includingMessages from My Father (1996),Family Man (1998), and an essay in the March 27, 2006 issue ofThe New Yorker, "Alice, Off the Page", discussing his late wife. In December 2006, a slightly expanded version of the essay was published as a book titledAbout Alice. InMessages from My Father, Trillin recounts how his father always expected his son to be aJew, but had primarily "raised me to be an American".^[8]

Trillin has also written a collection of short stories,Barnett Frummer is an Unbloomed Flower (1969), and three comic novels,Runestruck (1977),Floater (1980), andTepper Isn't Going Out (2002). The latter novel is about a man who enjoys parking in New York City for its own sake and is unusual among novels for exploring the subject ofparking.

In 2008, Trillin was elected to theAmerican Academy of Arts and Letters.^[9] The same year,The Library of America selected Trillin's essay "Stranger with a Camera" for inclusion in its two-century retrospective of American True Crime. In 2012, Trillin was awarded theThurber Prize for American Humor forQuite Enough of Calvin Trillin: Forty Years of Funny Stuff, published by Random House.^[10] In 2013, he was inducted into theNew York Writers Hall of Fame.

In 1965, Trillin married the educator and writerAlice Stewart Trillin, with whom he had two daughters.^[11] Alice died in 2001.^[11] He also has four grandchildren. Trillin lives in theGreenwich Village area of New York City.

Trillin was a close friend ofJoan Didion and her husbandJohn Gregory Dunne.^[12] He met Dunne when the two worked atTime in the 1960s.^[13] Dunne wrote an afterword to Trillin's 1993 bookRemembering Denny and Trillin contributed a foreword to Dunne's posthumously released collectionRegards (2005). In September 2022, Trillin was one of the speakers at Didion's memorial service in New York City.^[14]

• An Education in Georgia: Charlayne Hunter, Hamilton Holmes, and the Integration of the University of Georgia. New York: Viking. 1964.ISBN 978-0820313887.
• U.S. Journal. New York: E.P. Dutton and Co. 1971.ISBN 978-0525226604.
• American Fried: Adventures of a Happy Eater. New York: Doubleday. 1974.ISBN 978-0385004404.
• Alice, Let's Eat: Further Adventures of a Happy Eater. New York: Random House. 1978.ISBN 978-0765198310.
• Uncivil Liberties. Boston: Ticknor and Fields. 1982.ISBN 978-0899190976.
• Third Helpings. Boston: Ticknor and Fields. 1983.ISBN 978-0899191737.
• Killings. Boston: Ticknor and Fields. 1984.ISBN 978-0399591402.
• With All Disrespect: More Uncivil Liberties. Boston: Ticknor and Fields. 1985.ISBN 978-0899193533.
• If You Can't Say Something Nice. Boston: Ticknor and Fields. 1987.ISBN 978-0899195315.
• Travels with Alice. Boston: Ticknor and Fields. 1989.ISBN 978-0899199108.
• Enough's Enough: And Other Rules of Life. Boston: Ticknor and Fields. 1990.ISBN 978-0899199580.
• American Stories. Boston: Ticknor and Fields. 1991.ISBN 978-0395593677.
• Remembering Denny. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 1993.ISBN 978-0374226077.
• Too Soon to Tell. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 1995.ISBN 978-0374278465.
• Messages from My Father: A Memoir. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 1996.ISBN 978-0374525088.
• Family Man. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 1998.ISBN 9780374525835.
• Feeding a Yen: Savoring Local Specialties, from Kansas City to Cuzco. New York: Random House. 2003.ISBN 978-0375508080.
• About Alice. New York: Random House. 2006.ISBN 978-1400066155.
• Trillin on Texas. Austin: University of Texas Press. 2011.ISBN 978-0292726505.
• Quite Enough of Calvin Trillin: Forty Years of Funny Stuff. New York: Random House. 2011.ISBN 978-1400069828.
• Jackson, 1964: And Other Dispatches from Fifty Years of Reporting on Race in America. New York: Random House. 2016.ISBN 978-0399588242.
• The Lede: Dispatches from a Life in the Press. New York: Random House. 2024.ISBN 978-0593596449.

• Runestruck. New York: Little, Brown and Company. 1977.ISBN 978-0316852753.
• Floater. Boston: Ticknor and Fields. 1980.ISBN 978-0899190174.
• Tepper Isn't Going Out. New York: Random House. 2002.ISBN 978-0375758515.

• Barnett Frummer is an Unbloomed Flower. New York: Viking. 1969.ISBN 978-0670148066.

• Deadline Poet: My Life As a Doggerelist. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 1994.ISBN 978-0374135522.
• Obliviously On He Sails: The Bush Administration in Rhyme. New York: Random House. 2004.ISBN 978-1400062881.
• A Heckuva Job: More of the Bush Administration in Rhyme. New York: Random House. 2006.ISBN 978-1400065561.
• Deciding the Next Decider: The 2008 Presidential Race in Rhyme. New York: Random House. 2008.ISBN 978-1400068289.
• Dogfight: The 2012 Presidential Campaign in Verse. New York: Random House. 2012.ISBN 978-0812993684.
• No Fair! No Fair! And Other Jolly Poems of Childhood. New York: Orchard Books. 2016.ISBN 978-0545825788.

• Column archive atThe Nation
• Appearances onC-SPAN
• Calvin Trillin atIMDb
• Calvin Trillin collected news and commentary atThe New York Times
• George Plimpton (Fall 1995)."Calvin Trillin, The Art of Humor No. 3".The Paris Review. Fall 1995 (136).
• Alex Altman (December 1, 2008)."Q & A Calvin Trillin".Time. Archived fromthe original on December 2, 2008.
• "Calvin Trillin Is Going Out — to Eat (Again)", Dave Weich,Powells.com
• Strolling and Snacking with Calvin TrillinThe New York Times
• "The Salon Interview: Calvin Trillin"Archived 2010-10-30 at theWayback Machine
• "Chillin’ with Calvin Trillin" Interview by Pamela Ryckman,The Brooklyn Rail (June 2005)
• Politics In Verse With Calvin Trillin Interview.

• 1935 births
• Living people
• Writers from Kansas City, Missouri
• 20th-century American novelists
• 21st-century American novelists
• Jewish American novelists
• American columnists
• American food writers
• American humorists
• American male journalists
• American male novelists
• American travel writers
• Yale University alumni
• The Nation (U.S. magazine) people
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• People from Greenwich Village
• 20th-century American male writers
• 21st-century American male writers
• Novelists from New York (state)
• Novelists from Missouri
• James Beard Foundation Award winners
• 20th-century American non-fiction writers
• 21st-century American non-fiction writers
• 21st-century American Jews
• Members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters

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