Ryan Knighton

BA (Hons), MA

Instructor, English
Faculty of Arts and Sciences
School of Humanities
English

604.986.1911 ext. 2416
Fir Building, room FR 404
rknighto@capilanou.ca

Education

MA, Simon Fraser University, 1998.

BA (Honours), Simon Fraser University, 1995.

Bio

Ryan Knighton (MA, Simon Fraser University, 1998) is an internationally acclaimed blind author, screenwriter, journalist and performer. His two memoirs, Cockeyed (Penguin) and C'mon Papa (Knopf), both received numerous award nominations, including the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humor, and have been translated into more than a dozen languages.

A contributor to the American radio programs This American Life and The Moth, Knighton has also written for The New York Times, Outside, Esquire, The Globe and Mail, Popular Mechanics, The Walrus, The Observer, The Believer, Men's Health, Vice, The Sunday Telegraph and The National Post, among many others.

As a contributing editor to Afar magazine, Knighton's travel writing has taken him around the world, from Bhutan's Himalayan temples to Zimbabwe's game reserves, from Cairo's Arab Spring to Helsinki's saunas, his journalism earning him two Thomas Lowell Awards, an Eddie/Aussie Award and a James Beard Media Award nomination. He is also a Sundance Screenwriting Lab fellow and the recipient of the 2009 Alfred Sloan Prize from the Tribecca Film Institute for his feature adaptation of Cockeyed.

As a screenwriter, Knighton has written movies for Universal Studios, Paramount Pictures and 20th Century Fox, and has created or supervised several TV pilots for FX.

He continues to be a sought-after public speaker and storyteller who has performed at theaters, conferences and universities around the world, including NASA, the University of London, UCLA and MIT. For the past four seasons, he has served as a consulting producer on the network drama In the Dark.

Today Knighton lives with his family on Vancouver Island in the village of Ucluelet. Surfing is his preoccupation.