Author Winston Groom to Speak About Football, College at UA

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — “Forrest Gump” author Winston Groom will speak to students and visitors at noon Monday, Oct. 29, in the Ferguson Theater on The University of Alabama campus.

The event is free and open to the public.

Groom, who graduated from UA in 1965, will speak on the influence of UA and football on his writing. He was inducted into UA’s College of Communication and Information Sciences Hall of Fame in 2009 and received the Clarence Cason Writing Award in 2006.

Groom published “Forrest Gump” in 1986; it was adapted into an Academy Award-winning film in 1994 starring Tom Hanks. Groom also is the author of more than a dozen other books, including “The Crimson Tide,” an illustrated history of the team; the updated and revised 2010 edition, published by The University of Alabama Press, includes two new chapters.

Sponsors of the talk are UA’s English department and the UA chapter of the Sigma Tau Delta international English honor society. UA’s Phi Xi chapter is one of the largest and most prestigious in the nation. This chapter engages in a number of social outreach activities, publishes an award-winning literary journal, Dewpoint, and sends an annual delegation to the National English Honor Convention.

The English department is part of UA’s College of Arts and Sciences, the University’s largest division and the largest liberal arts college in the state. Students from the College have won numerous national awards including Rhodes Scholarships, Goldwater Scholarships and memberships on the USA Today Academic All American Team.