#studs terkel

Happy Birthday Studs Terkel!

Today we honor the birth of Pulitzer Prize winning author, radio host, and historian Studs Terkel, born Louis Terkel in New York City on May 16, 1912. We present our author-inscribed copies of Terkel’s Coming of Age: The Story of our Century by Those Who’ve Lived It (The New Press, NYC, 1995, with distribution by W. W. Norton & Co.) and Alan Wieder’s oral history Studs Terkel: Politics, Culture, but Mostly Conversation (Montly Reveiw Press, NYC, 2016).

 Terkel moved to Chicago to attend University of Chicago, attaining a bachelor’s of philosophy and a J.D. there, but despite being admitted to the Illinois bar after finishing law school, he never practiced law. Instead, he found work in a writer’s project funded by theWork’s Progress Administration (WPA),which allowed him to write and act for radio (often taking on the role of the villain). It was as an actor that he was dubbed Studs, from Chicago writer James T. Farrell’sStuds Lonigan trilogy, reportedly because there was another Louis in cast and the director wanted to differentiate the two. Terkel happened to be reading Farrell at the time and the name stuck. 

Radio work eventually led to a television show, “Studs’ Place” (1949 - 1951), where Terkel’s strength as not only an interviewer, but a conversationalist, was recognized. However, a combination of the changing television landscape and Terkel’s outspoken leftist views in the McCarthy era meant the show was short lived. Terkel found a new home as a radio host at the newly formed WFMT, a fine-arts station more tolerant of Studs’ politics, where his show would endure for 45 years. It was through his radio program that he attracted the attention of publisher Andre Schriffin, and his literary career took off. Terkel passed away at his home in Chicago in 2008, at the age of 96. 

Studs Terkel insisted that everyone has a story, and everyone deserves to be heard. He is remembered as one of the greatest oral historians of the 20th century. 

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-Olivia, Special Collections Graduate Intern