| Allen Rucker was born in Wichita Falls, Texas, raised in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, and has an MA in Communication from Stanford University, an MA in American Culture from the University of Michigan, and a BA in English from Washington University, St. Louis.
He is the author or co-author of eleven books of humor and non-fiction. His first-person account of becoming paralyzed at middle age, called “The Best Seat In The House: How I Woke Up One Tuesday and Was Paralyzed for Life,” was published by HarperCollins in January, 2007. The paperback edition was released in early 2008. Widely review and praised, it was a New York Times “Editor’s Choice.” The review from Publisher Weekly concludes:
“Rucker is a gifted observer-humorist, unleashing a straight-arrow honesty and a vibrant, penetrating wit while probing the most intimate aspects of contemporary life and human behavior…”
Other recent books include a memoir by former #1 rank tennis star, Corina Morariu, and her life-altering bout with leukemia, to be published by Hay House in February, 2010. The memoir he co-wrote with country legend Randy Owen of “Alabama,” “Born Country,” was released in 2008 and a similar memoir with country star, Gretchen Wilson, “Redneck Woman,” reached #29 on the New York Times bestseller list in 2007.
His published work also includes three books on the Sopranos, the most successful being the New York Times #1 bestseller, “The Sopranos Family Cookbook”. He has also written “Hollywood Causes Cancer: The Tom Green Story” (with Tom Green), and two books of satire with comedian Martin Mull, “The History of White People In America” and “A Paler Shade of White.”
As a TV writer-producer, he co-founded the experimental video documentary group, TVTV, and has written numerous network specials, documentaries, and teleplays, including the series, “The History of White People In America;” “Christopher Reeve: A Celebration of Hope” (Emmy nominee); the original HBO movie, “Hometown Boy Makes Good,” starring Anthony Edwards; “CBS: The First Fifty Years;” “Big Guns Talk,” a history of the Western; and “Family Values: The Mob & The Movies.”
His most recent TV project was an adaptation of David Maraniss’s bestselling book on Vietnam, 1967, “Two Days in October,” broadcast on PBS’s “American Experience” in October, 2005. The highly-acclaimed program won both the 2006 George Peabody Award and the 2006 Emmy Award for Exceptional Merit in Nonfiction Filmmaking. .
Mr. Rucker is the recipient of the duPont-Columbia Journalism Award, the Writers Guild Annual Award, and two CableACE Awards, among others. In 2005, he received the special WGA Joan Young Award for career distinction as a writer with a disability. “The History of White People In America” was honored by the Paley Center For Media in 2001 and TVTV was given a full Paley Center retrospective in 2004.
Mr. Rucker lectures widely on the subject of living with disability. He is also a contributing editor to “New Mobility” magazine and the chairman of the Writers With Disabilities Committee at the WGA. He lives in LA with wife, Ann. They have two sons |
