"I’ve known this week’s guest, the humorist, essayist, and novelist Roy Blount, Jr., for something like twenty years — in the late eighties and early nineties, when we first became acquainted, he would occasionally take an assignment from me at one or another magazine, though there’s nothing special about that — by his own estimation, the 67-year-old has written for some 166 diffferent publications, from The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and Rolling Stone to Playboy, TV Guide, and Organic Gardening. He has also written twenty or so books — when you add in the various anthologies of his work, it’s hard to put an exact number to it — though there’s no dispute that his latest is Alphabet Juice, a gleeful and passionate exploration of the meanings and origins of words from the particular perspective of the nation’s most expert commentator on all things Southern — you’ll have to trust me that it’s much more interesting than it sounds, kind of like Strunk and White meet Flatt and Scruggs. But it’s a safe bet that you know him best as a panelist on the National Public Radio news quiz show Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, where his deadpan wit is one of many reasons to tune in each week. Born in Indianapois but raised in Decatur, Georgia, Blount graduated Phi Betta Kappa from Vanderbilt University and got a graduate degree from Harvard. Since leaving his last real job in 1975 — he spent seven memorable years as a staff writer at Sports Illustrated in the magazine’s true heyday — he has made his living one piece at a time, but of course as freelancers go, Blount is in a class by himself: always in demand, a star by any standard, and always fun to jaw with, no matter the subject." - Evan Smith, Texas Monthly Talks, Broadcast 12.04.08