The Call of the Wild
Like the subjects of the short stories and essays he frequently publishes in outdoor
sports…
Georgia
(Sep 18, 2012) —
Like the subjects of the short stories and essays he frequently publishes in outdoor
sports magazines, English department chair William Rice is mysteriously driven by
“something buried in the DNA” to pursue prey.
Taught by his father to hunt and fish, Rice still takes annual treks west to Montana,
Colorado, Wyoming or New Mexico and occasionally to the North Georgia mountains, mostly
to fly fish. Along the way he meets and imagines the colorful characters of a dozen
stories he has published in magazines like Grays Sporting Journal, Sporting Classics
and Big Sky Journal.
By his own description, Rice grew up in Alabama among “coon hunters, squirrel hunters,
country musicians, beautiful and deceitful women, long-winded politicians, lying fishermen
and a wild-eyed preacher
or two.” They also figure prominently in his writing, which runs the gamut from character
studies of the lone hunter
to wily and formidable prey and intriguing pursuits and musings on the loss of animal
habitat and connection to the land.
Rice’s passion for outdoor sporting made the leap to literary form in the diminishing
but still lucrative outdoor market around the time he joined the Kennesaw State faculty
in 2006.
“I think it had a lot to do with my love of literature and my training as a professor
and a scholar,” said Rice, who also has published scholarly books on great American
writers like Ralph Ellison and Toni Morrison and still regularly contributes to higher
education journals.
“Even though outdoor writing is not as much in vogue in literary circles as it once
was, I read and was influenced by great outdoor writers like Jack London and Ernest
Hemingway, who wrote probably one of the best trout fishing stories ever written.”
The explosion of interest in fly fishing popularized in the movie “A River Runs Through
It” and the growth of hunting lodges has renewed interest in the lore of hunting,
camping and fishing, creating a whole new market for Rice’s stories.
Rice said he finds the writing “therapeutic,” providing balance to the demands of
his job as department chair.
“In an administrative position, you don’t have a lot of concentrated time to write
— the kind of time it takes to write books — so I got interested in doing these stories,”
Rice said. “I’m leaning towards doing some kind of collection, but mainly, I just
enjoy writing them.”
-- Sabbaye McGriff
A leader in innovative teaching and learning, Kennesaw State University offers undergraduate, graduate and doctoral degrees to its nearly 43,000 students. With 11 colleges on two metro Atlanta campuses, Kennesaw State is a member of the University System of Georgia. The university’s vibrant campus culture, diverse population, strong global ties and entrepreneurial spirit draw students from throughout the country and the world. Kennesaw State is a Carnegie-designated doctoral research institution (R2), placing it among an elite group of only 6 percent of U.S. colleges and universities with an R1 or R2 status. For more information, visit kennesaw.edu.
