Tony Magistrale is Professor and former chair of the English Department at the University of Vermont where he has taught courses in writing and American literature since 1983 when he returned to the United States after a Fulbright post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Milan, Italy. He has lectured at many universities in North and South America and Western Europe, most recently at Pontificia Catholic University in Santiago, Chile. He obtained a Ph.D at the University of Pittsburgh in 1981 Over the past two decades, Magistrale's twenty-six books and many articles have covered a broad area of interests. He has published on the writing process, international study abroad, and his own poetry. But the majority of his books have centered on defining and tracing Anglo-American Gothicism, from its origins in eighteenth-century romanticism to its contemporary manifestations in popular culture, particularly in the work of Stephen King. He has published three separate interviews with Stephen King, and from 2005-09 Magistrale served as a research assistant to Mr. King. Accordingly, a dozen of his scholarly books and many published journal articles have illuminated the genre's narrative themes, psychological and social contexts, and historical development. He is frequently cited in scholarly books dealing with the interdisciplinary aspects of American horror art, and has been interviewed and/or profiled on PBS television; ABC Radio, Australia; Vermont Public Radio; German Public Radio, ARD; North Carolina Public Radio; Ocean Light Productions, and by the following national and international newspapers and magazines: The New Yorker, Cinescape, The National Review, The Miami Herald, The Boston Globe, Houston Chronicle, The Baltimore Sun, New York Daily News, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The St. Petersburg Times, Movie Geeks United!, Lighthouse Media One (England), Oggi (Italy), Las Ultimas Noticias (Chile), and L'Express (France). In 1997, Magistrale received the Kroespsch-Maurice Award for Excellence in Teaching at the University of Vermont. In 2001 he was presented the university's George V. Kidder Outstanding Faculty Award. In 2003 he received the Arts and Sciences Dean's Lecture Award. And in 2010, he was named University Scholar for 2010-11. His newest book is a study of The Shawshank Redemption-the film, novella, the history of the Ohio State Reformatory, and their relationship to fan theory-recently published by Palgrave Macmillan.