Ken Grimwood
Kenneth Milton Grimwood (February 27, 1944 – June 6, 2003) was an American author who was born in Dothan, Alabama. In his fantasy fiction Grimwood combined themes of life-affirmation and hope with metaphysical concepts, themes found in his best-known novel, the highly popular Replay. He sometimes wrote under pseudonyms, including Alan Cochran.
His sister, Teresa Panther-Yates, once described him as "a brilliant, beautiful human being who knew that the best of fiction has a message." On New Year's Day, 2006, she recalled their youth:
| “ | I have done our genealogy and our ancestry was largely French with some Cherokee. I have fond memories of our days in rural Alabama on the farm with our grandparents. It would read like a Mark Twain novel. Ken had a smile that would fill up a room. His first short story (at the age of four) was about a cat the size of a roach. I thought we would burn the house down several times over when we were young (well... he was old enough to know better) with his chemistry set. We nearly did once for real when we decided to have a fire in the fireplace (Ken was about 18 and I was about nine), and he forgot to open the flue. We dragged around on the floor underneath the smoke until he remembered what to do. My mother (Nina Newberry... also deceased) never knew this, nor did my father (living). He brought a bat home once (he was about 15) and laughed hysterically as my mother went shrieking through the house. | ” |
Grimwood took an interest in EC Comics and radio journalism while growing up in Pensacola, Florida. He graduated from Indian Springs School in 1961 and then spent the summer in Paris while studying at the Sorbonne. He attended Emory College from 1961 to 1963. In the mid-1960s, he worked in news at WLAK in Lakeland, Florida. Heading north, he studied psychology at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, where he contributed short fiction to Bard's student publication, Observer in 1969, graduating in 1970.
Some of his early novels were written while he was nightside editor at KFWB News 980 radio in Los Angeles, but the success of Replay enabled him to leave KFWB News 980 for full-time writing. Married once with no children, Grimwood had friends on both coasts, including Tom Atwill, who is related to the actor Lionel Atwill. Atwill described his friend's "free spirit lifestyle" and recalled, "He was a loner, almost a recluse. He liked small gatherings of friends. We had many dinner parties with him and some friends, and he would always be the one to keep the evening hilarious; he was a great storyteller. He did not like publicity and was actually quite shy... He was a media junkie. He owned the first Betamax sold; he had the largest video library I've ever seen. One of his favorite things to do was for he and I to watch some old movie in the afternoon; we did it often."
Towards the end of his life, Grimwood maintained a brief email correspondence with Hellboy screenwriter Peter Briggs, whom he contacted after seeing Briggs' review of Replay on the book's Amazon feedback page, revealed in an interview with Briggs in 2004.
Read more about Ken Grimwood: Breakthrough, Two Plus Two, Replay, Into The Deep, Other Works, Death
Famous quotes containing the word ken:
“Is America a land of God where saints abide for ever? Where golden fields spread fair and broad, where flows the crystal river? Certainly not flush with saints, and a good thing, too, for the saints sent buzzing into man’s ken now are but poor- mouthed ecclesiastical film stars and cliché-shouting publicity agents.
Their little knowledge bringing them nearer to their ignorance,
Ignorance bringing them nearer to death,
But nearness to death no nearer to God.”
—Sean O’Casey (1884–1964)