Johnny Payne is dramatist, novelist, scholar, and has been a professor at the University of Texas at El Paso

University of Texas at El Paso

The University of Texas at El Paso is a four-year state university, and is a component institution of the University of Texas System. Its campus is located on the bank of the Rio Grande in El Paso, Texas. The school was founded in 1914 as The Texas State School of Mines and Metallurgy,...

  and Florida Atlantic University

Florida Atlantic University

Florida Atlantic University, also referred to as FAU or Florida Atlantic, is a public, coeducational, research university located in , United States. The university has six satellite campuses located in the Florida cities of Dania Beach, Davie, Fort Lauderdale, Jupiter, Port St. Lucie, and in Fort...

's Boca Raton  campus. He has been head of a Northwestern University

Northwestern University

Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston and Chicago, Illinois, USA. Northwestern has eleven undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools offering 124 undergraduate degrees and 145 graduate and professional degrees....

 creative writing program in Cusco, Peru. Payne has just accepted the Dean of the College of Liberal Arts position at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

Education

Payne received his bachelor's degree in Comparative Literature at Indiana University

Indiana University

Indiana University is a multi-campus public university system in the state of Indiana, United States. Indiana University has a combined student body of more than 100,000 students, including approximately 42,000 students enrolled at the Indiana University Bloomington campus and approximately 37,000...

 and was awarded an MFA

Master of Fine Arts

A Master of Fine Arts is a graduate degree typically requiring 2–3 years of postgraduate study beyond the bachelor's degree , although the term of study will vary by country or by university. The MFA is usually awarded in visual arts, creative writing, filmmaking, dance, or theatre/performing arts...

 at the University of Alabama

University of Alabama

The University of Alabama is a public coeducational university located in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, United States....

. He completed his PhD at Stanford University.

Research

Payne conducted fieldwork in the Quechua highlands of Peru

Peru

Peru , officially the Republic of Peru , is a country in western South America. It is bordered on the north by Ecuador and Colombia, on the east by Brazil, on the southeast by Bolivia, on the south by Chile, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean....

and has published two books from this research. Cuentos cusqueños is a dual language text, in both Quechua and Spanish, and gives stories told by several Quechua native speakers. She-Calf and Other Quechua Folk Tales is a translation of Quechua folktales into English.

Novels
Payne, best known for his novel Kentuckiana, has been a relentless experimenter with form. Publisher's Weekly referred to him as a "master ventriloquist" (1991) based on his ability to imitate and integrate many forms and style into the weave of his multiform novels. Pastiche and parody, folklore and fables, black comedy and theatrical devices, and as well as postmodern self-consciousness are all used to tell stories that are essentially human parables.

Novels

• Kentuckiana (1997)
• North of Patagonia (2001)
• The Ambassador’s Son
• Baja (1998)
• Chalk Lake (1996)

Literary Ethnography

• She-Calf and Other Quechua Folk Tales
• Cuentos cusqueños (1984)

Non-fiction

• Conquest of the New Word: Experimental Fiction and Translation in the Americas (1993)
• Voice and Style (1995)
• “Talking Around Terrorism: A Conference Report”. Telos 74 (Winter 1987-88). New York: Telos Press.

Translations

• with Phyllis Silverstein Teresa Porzecanski, Sun Inventions; Perfumes of Carthage:Two Novellas (2000)