Wyatt, Charles 1943- (Charles M. Wyatt)

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Wyatt, Charles 1943- (Charles M. Wyatt)

PERSONAL:

Born 1943; married; wife's name Cindy (a harpist, poet, and teacher). Education: Curtis Institute of Music, B.Mus.; Philadelphia Musical Academy, M.Mus.; Warren Wilson College, M.F.A., 1991.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Nashville, TN. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Writer, flutist. Played flute for the Philadelphia Opera and the U.S. Marine Band; served as principal flutist for the Nashville Symphony and the Peninsula Music Festival; has served as visiting fiction writer at Binghamton University, Denison University, University of Central Oklahoma, Purdue University, and Oberlin College; University of California at Los Angeles Writing Program, Los Angeles, CA, online course instructor; University of Nebraska—Omaha, low residency M.F.A. program faculty member.

AWARDS, HONORS:

John Simmons Short Fiction Award, 1995, for Listening to Mozart.

WRITINGS:

Listening to Mozart (stories), University of Iowa Press (Iowa City, IA), 1995.

Falling Stones: The Spirit Autobiography of S.M. Jones, Texas Review Press (Huntsville, TX), 2002.

Swan of Tuonela (stories), Hanging Loose Press (Brooklyn, NY), 2006.

SIDELIGHTS:

Charles Wyatt started his career as a musician, studying first at the Curtis Institute of Music, where he earned his bachelor's degree in music, and then at the Philadelphia Musical Academy, where he earned his master's degree. He worked as a flutist for a number of orchestras and musical groups before becoming the principal flutist for the Nashville Symphony and the Peninsula Music Festival. However, in 1991, he graduated from Warren Wilson College with an M.F.A. in writing, and began a new phase of his career. His first book, Listening to Mozart, mines his previous experience and education in a series of linked short stories about flutist James Baxter. The stories recount various experiences over a period of forty years of Baxter's life, including his sidestepping service in the Vietnam War by taking a position in the U.S. Marine Band. A Publishers Weekly reviewer remarked: "The brilliance of this work lies primarily in the narrator's sensitivity: easily bruised by the absurdity of life."

Wyatt has gone on to write additional works of fiction, including Falling Stones: The Spirit Autobiography of S.M. Jones and Swan of Tuonela. The latter volume looks at the fate of hippies in the post-hippie era, looking through the eyes of another musician-turned-writer. Mark Eleveld, in a review for Booklist, dubbed the book "a delicately fashioned collection of short stories."