Stretching the Imagination
Keith Dunnavant's writing career spans four decades.
“I enjoy rock ‘n’ roll, but sometimes you get to where you want to play jazz.”
-Keith Dunnavant
No subject or genre is beyond the grasp of author Keith Dunnavant
Written by JON COOPER | Photos Courtesy of KEITH DUNNAVANT
Keith Dunnavant never really learned about boundaries or their limitations.
“I get that from my dad,” he says; his father, Bob, started the first state news radio station
in Alabama. “The most important thing he taught me was, ‘If you can dream it, you can become it.’”
The 58-year-old native of Athens, Ala., has called Newnan home for the past 31 years. He's still dreaming big and pushing boundaries, having made the journey from award-winning sportswriter, magazine entrepreneur, podcaster and documentary producer to best-selling
author of eight books – so far.
Book number nine is in the works. “The biography of a major military figure” is all he would reveal.
Dunnavant’s career path isn’t surprising.
“I grew up in a media family, so I was probably destined to be in the media,” says Dunnavant. His grandfather was in radio, while oldest brother Bob, who passed away in 1995, was his first writing mentor. His brother Jim, the closest to Dunnavant, albeit nine years older, was the family’s first sportswriter and still lives in Newnan. All had careers in newspapers.
“I had five older brothers. I grew up in a
house full of adults. I didn’t really want to be
a kid,” says Keith.
That maturity and his willingness to speak up led to him “inventing my first real job in journalism” as sports editor at The Journal, the local weekly newspaper.
“I went to the publisher and I said, ‘You’d get a lot more readers for your paper if you had a sports section and I’m the guy to do it,’” recalls Keith, freshly graduated from eighth grade at the time. “She said, ‘I’ll give you a shot.’ For the first few months, I went out and raised my own salary by selling advertising.”
Fearlessly putting himself out there and pushing boundaries has paid off.
In 1988, he won the William Randolph Hearst National Writing Award, earning a scholarship at the University of Alabama and becoming the first college student to be recognized by the Alabama Sportswriters Association. After graduation, he wrote for the Birmingham Post-Herald, Dallas Times Herald, and Atlanta Journal-Constitution before landing his “dream job” at the Los Angeles Times.
He accomplished all this by age 26, but the boundary stretching was just beginning.
Keith moved into magazines, founding Dunnavant’s Paydirt Illustrated, a regional sports magazine, then launching Sports, Inc. “It was the first sports-business magazine. It was really ahead of its time,” he says. He also got hired as features writer for The National – where he secured the first exclusive interview with heavyweight champion James “Buster” Douglas after his titanic upset of Mike Tyson – and embarked on a book-writing career.
But perhaps his most important move at that time was to Newnan in 1992.
“I needed to be near Atlanta for the new ventures I was starting after transitioning out of the newspaper business,” says Keith.
Since 1996, he has authored eight books, including sports-themed books on legendary college football coach Paul “Bear” Bryant (“Coach,” 1996), Green Bay Packers two-time Super Bowl MVP quarterback Bart Starr (“America’s Quarterback,” 2011), four-time Super Bowl-winning and three-time Super Bowl MVP QB Joe Montana (“Montana,” 2015). He also chronicled the 1966 11-0 Alabama football team (“The Missing Ring,” 2006), the growing tie between TV and college football (“The Fifty-Year Seduction,” 2004), and “Time Out,” (1999), about a one-year, 120,000-mile journey in which he witnessed more than 250 events.
In 2019, he veered away from sports, authoring “Spy Pilot,” a deeper look into the U-2 spy incident and pilot Francis Gary Powers, written with Powers’s son, Francis Gary Powers Jr., and most recently, “Speed,” (2021), about test pilot Bob Gilliland and his flights with the SR-71 Blackbird.
Keith welcomed the departure from sports: “I’ve told people who didn’t quite understand me moving from sportswriting and sports books into general history books, ‘I enjoy rock ‘n’ roll, but sometimes you get to where you want to play jazz.’”
“I liked getting inside peoples’ heads. You’re able to do that as a feature writer. In writing books, it’s kind of going to that next level,” he says. “I find a tremendous amount of fulfillment taking on someone’s story and trying to figure out what the story is and then how to
tell it.”
Telling these stories means using a discerning eye in doing research.
“Just because something is interesting doesn’t make it relevant,” he says. “You have to very carefully determine what the story is – the story you want to tell – and then be extremely disciplined about not veering away from that theme. When I’m researching a historic figure, such as Bob Gilliland, I go to great lengths to learn everything I can about him and the world he inhabited, to feel it, to accurately portray it to the reader. I’m especially looking for moments that I can paint narratively with as much detail as possible. I typically use only maybe five percent of what I learn, but if I’ve done my job right, it’s the five percent that accurately captures the subject and brings him to life on the page.
“‘Speed’ took a delicate touch in another respect,” he continued. “The reader needed to appreciate the remarkable engineering feat of the SR-71 Blackbird. I had to learn about all that technology then make sure the story of the technology didn't overwhelm the narrative. ”
Telling the story can be as painstaking.
“I sometimes spend weeks and even months writing and rewriting important passages such as the opening scene of ‘The Missing Ring,’ which set the tension for
the whole book,” he said. “With ‘Spy Pilot,’ I was pushing the edges in a different way – writing the first half of the book as a traditional third-person biography of the controversial pilot and the last half as a memoir of the son he left behind to deal with the baggage of all that history.”
The peace of mind he feels after having settled in Newnan has allowed Dunnavant to freely travel into all these diverse worlds. He said Newnan even contributed to the creative process.
Dunnavant is a regular at the Redneck Gourmet in downtown Newnan. “I came up with the idea for ‘Spy Pilot’ over coffee there,” he says. “I saw a news item while reading the paper that intrigued me. It was the first of many steps toward deciding to write that book.”
Dunnavant has taken the next step in storytelling, anchoring the podcast “American Achievers,” and has created successful documentaries. The acclaimed 2013 documentary, “Three Days At Foster,” is an in-depth look at the integration of Bryant’s Alabama football program, which was a notable step in ending segregation in the South. His next documentary is on the SR-71 Blackbird Spy Plane.
“I want to keep stretching myself creatively and challenging myself, like a painter or a musician,” he says.
However the genres may change, one thing will remain constant for Dunnavant:
“I really enjoy Newnan. It’s a great town and people here have been very supportive of my books over the years.” NCM
