Thursday, July 31, 2024, 6 p.m.
Tomlinson will sign books immediately following the reading.

The University of Georgia Grady College of Journalism MFA Narrative Nonfiction Program, in partnership with The Bitter Southerner, Avid Bookshop and ATHICA, welcomes visiting author Tommy Tomlinson to Athens for a public reading and book signing on July 31.

Tomlinson will read from his most recent book, “Dogland: Passion, Glory, and Lots of Slobber at the Westminster Dog Show.” The book is a look inside the Westminster Dog Show, told through the story of a champion Samoyed named Striker and his handler, Laura King on a quest for the 2022 championship. Tomlinson traces the history of humans and dogs to explore how we created dogs and how they, in some ways, created us. Released in April 2024, Kirkus Reviews raved, “This book wants to lick your face. Let it.”

Tomlinson is the author of “The Elephant in the Room,” a memoir about being overweight in America. He is also the host of the podcast SouthBound in partnership with WFAE and author of the “The Writing Shed” newsletter. He has written for Esquire, ESPN the Magazine, Sports Illustrated, Forbes, and Garden & Gun. He spent 23 years as a reporter and local columnist for the Charlotte Observer, where he was a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize in commentary. His stories have been chosen twice for the Best American Sports Writing series (2012 and 2015) and appeared in the anthology “America’s Best Newspaper Writing.”

ATHICA is supported in part by the Georgia Council for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the James E. and Betty J. Huffer Foundation.