Readings for Writers (with 2016 MLA Update Card)

About Anthony WinklerJo Ray McCuen-Metherell

Born in Belgium the daughter of an American minister Jo Ray McCuen-Metherell had moved from Brussels to Paris to Bern Switzerland by the time she was seven years old. In Bern she attended the Freies Gymnasium and spoke not only fluent French and German but also English which was the language spoken to her by her American parents. After World War II Dr. McCuen-Metherell's parents sent her and her brother to Pacific Union College (in California's Napa Valley) where she received a B. A. in English. She taught English and French in high school for several years and then took night classes at the University of Southern California where she earned an M.A. and Ph.D. While working on her doctorate she was hired to teach English at Glendale Community College and later to serve as Dean of the Evening College. A chance meeting in 1973 with Anthony C. Winkler a successful novelist led to a literary partnership that has produced 15 coauthored textbooks used at colleges and universities across the United States. Born in Kingston Jamaica West Indies Anthony C. Winkler was educated in Jamaica at Excelsior College Mount Alvernia Academy and Cornwall College the last two being in Montego Bay. He was also educated at Citrus Community College Glendora California. Winkler taught briefly at Pasadena City College and for a year at Moneague Teachers College in Saint Anne Jamaica an experience chronicled in GOING HOME TO TEACH (1995). From 1968 to 1975 Winkler had sales territories as a bookman for Appleton Century Crofts textbook publishers and later for Scott Foresman. In 1969 he decided he could write textbooks as well as anyone. Through a chance meeting with the sales representative of another company he submitted the manuscript POETRY AS SYSTEM and was offered a contract for its publication. Eventually he met Jo Ray McCuen-Metherell and the two became textbook writers and collaborators. Over the years they have produced more than a dozen textbooks most on rhetoric and writing. In addition to Winkler's textbooks his body of work includes among other books: THE PAINTED CANOE (novel 1983); THE LUNATIC (novel 1987); THE GREAT YACHT RACE (novel 1992); DOG WAR (novel 2006); TRUST THE DARKNESS: MY LIFE AS A WRITER (autobiography 2008); THE BURGLARY (play premiered in Toronto in 2005); THE LUNATIC (movie filmed in 1991); THE ANNIHILATION OF FISH (movie 1999); and BOB MARLEY AN INTIMATE PORTRAIT BY HIS MOTHER (biography 1996 with Cedella Booker).