Cary Tennis wrote Salon.com's advice column "Since You Asked" from 2001 to 2013. His artistic intent was to raise a pedestrian, popular newspaper form to the level of serious literature. Writing five days a week for 12 years, he sometimes succeeded. Today he leads writing workshops and creative getaways, publishes books, performs his fiction and poetry in bars and art galleries, writes songs, plays guitar and contributes occasional pieces to magazines.

He studied English literature and journalism at the University of Miami (concentration on William Blake) and went to grad school in creative writing at San Francisco State (concentration on Nabokov, Wallace Stevens and William Faulkner). The professional career path for a person with an m.a. in creative writing from a state college did not appear rosy, secure or interesting at the time. Punk seemed far more engaging. So after working his way through grad school as a bike messenger he formed a punk/new wave band called the Repeat Offenders and played San Francisco joints like the Mab, The On Broadway and the Sound of Music. Then he ended up working in the mailroom of Western Electric. Then he  "worked" as a "rock journalist" for the SF Weekly, wrote a column called "Freefall," wrote Jerry Garcia's obit for the SF Examiner, etc. Rock journalism was easier and quicker than regular journalism so he ended up doing that for a while. Generally throughout the '80s he lived an idiosyncratic version of poet-and-fiction-writer-as-brilliant-urban-rebel-and-scold before settling down in 1989, quitting the booze and trying to make a legitimate go of it.

He landed a job at Salon.com in 1999 and began writing stories for that award-winning, groundbreaking literary and journalistic pioneer. In 2001 at Salon he took over the advice column from radio host and author Garrison Keillor. "Since You Asked," like Keillor's Mr. Blue, was a long-form, high-brow but low-key, with a literary and sophisticated tone. After leaving Salon in 2013, he continued to write the column once a week on his own site, carytennis.com. He's still working on the novel and really thinks he should send out more work to small magazines.

He attended the AWP 2014 conference in Seattle where he did two well-attended readings and a panel, all with The Sun magazine, and loved it.

Website: http://www.carytennis.com

Publications

• The Finishing Touch , The Sun Magazine (January 1, 2014)
• The Destruction of a Roseate Spoonbill Marsh Habitat, Florida, 1967 , The Sun Magazine (September 2012)
• The Journalist Responds Incorrectly to an Airplane Crash , Fiction International No. 29, "Pain" issue (1996)

Employment

• Advice Columnist at Salon Media, Inc. (April 1999 - October 2013)
• Freelance Journlist at SF Weekly, Spin, Details, SF Bay Guardian, SF Examiner, etc. (January 1985 - April 1999)
• Journalist at San Francisco Wekly (January 1981 - January 1985)

Degrees

• Bachelor of Arts in Literature and journalism from University of Miami (May 1976)

Genres of Interest

Fiction, Creative nonfiction, Playwriting, Screenwriting, Poetry