Kenneth John Atchity is an American producer (imdb.com) and author (amazon.com), who has worked variously in the world of letters as a literary manager, editor, speaker, writing coach, brand consultant, and professor of comparative literature. At home among the many worlds of communications and storytelling, he was labeled a "story merchant" by a visiting ambassador to the United States.

Atchity was born 16 January 1944 in Eunice, Louisiana

Eunice, Louisiana

Eunice is a city in Acadia, Evangeline and St. Landry parishes in the U.S. state of Louisiana. The population was 11,499 at the 2000 census.The St...

, son of Fred J. and Myrza (née Aguillard) Atchity; he grew up between Louisiana and Kansas City, Missouri. He and his companies, The Story Merchant , Atchity Entertainment International, Inc. The Writers Lifeline, Inc.,, and The Louisiana Wave Studio, LLC, in Shreveport, Louisiana

Shreveport, Louisiana

Shreveport is the third largest city in Louisiana. It is the principal city of the fourth largest metropolitan area in the state of Louisiana and is the 109th-largest city in the United States....

  produce films and develop books for publication; and books, screenplays, and films for television and cinema, and consult with writers about their career strategies and tactics.

His son, Vincent, graduated from Georgetown College in 1986 and his daughter, Rosemary McKenna, from Columbia University in 1990. Rosemary has two children, Meggie and Teddy; and Vincent one, Oliver.

Atchity resides in Los Angeles, California, and New York City. He is married to Kayoko Mitsumatsu, documentary filmmaker and founder of Yoga Gives Back (yogagivesback.org), for which he serves on its board of directors.

Entertainment career

In 1976, Atchity founded L/A House, Inc., a consulting, translation, book, television, and film development and production company whose clients included the Getty Museum and the US Postal Service. L/A House began by extending Atchity's teaching of creative writing to doing manuscript consultation and soon moved on to publishing with the production of Follies, a magazine covering creativity, of which he was the editor. In the 1980s L/A House moved into television, with a syndicated television pilot of "BreakThrough!" of which Atchity was executive producer and co-author.

In 1985, L/A House began development of a set of video/TV romance novel film projects entitled "Shades of Love," which became 16 full-length films, produced in 1986-87 with Atchity as executive producer, that aired throughout the world, distributed by Lorimar, Astral-Bellevue-Pathe, Manson International, and Warner Brothers International, nominated for Canada's Gemini Award; in the U.S. they premiered on Cinemax-HBO. Atchity resigned his tenured professorship at Occidental in 1987 to devote full-time to entertainment and publishing.

In 1989 he sold L/A House and founded AEI (Atchity Editorial/Entertainment International), a literary management and motion picture production company. Chi-Li Wong, formerly Associate Director of the Ft. Lauderdale Film Festival, joined him as partner in AEI, in 1992. AEI was incorporated in 1996, its name changed to Atchity Entertainment International, Inc. in 2005.

Atchity founded The Writers Lifeline, Inc. (incorporated in 2002) to continue the consulting work of L/A House and to prepare intellectual property for representation.

In 2006, he and manager-partner Fred Griffin of Houston's Griffin Partners, along with a group of investors from Louisiana and Texas, acquired The Louisiana Wave Studio, LLC in Shreveport, Louisiana from Walt Disney Productions. The LWS is the only tank specifically designed to make waves for motion pictures in North America. Films produced at the LWS include "The Guardian," "Mayday--Bering Sea," "Shark Night 3D," "Streets of Blood," and "I Love You, Philip Morris."

Responding to changes in the worlds of entertainment and publishing, in 2009 AEI shifted its energies to raising independent financing for motion pictures to advance its clients interests. In 2011 Atchity and Wong were nominated for an Emmy for producing "The Kennedy Detail" (Discovery) based on their clients' Jerry Blaine and Lisa McCubbin's New York Times bestselling book by the same title published by Gallery/Simon & Schuster in 2010.

In 2010, Atchity also founded Atchity Productions for independent film productions, and Story Merchant for strategic coaching for writers.

Producing filmography

• Ripley's Believe It or Not (2011) (Paramount)
• 14 Days with Alzheimer's (film festivals)
• Expatriate
  Expatriate
  An expatriate is a person temporarily or permanently residing in a country and culture other than that of the person's upbringing...
  
  (Aaron Eckhart) (2011) (Informant Media Entertainment)
• Hysteria
  Hysteria
  Hysteria, in its colloquial use, describes unmanageable emotional excesses. People who are "hysterical" often lose self-control due to an overwhelming fear that may be caused by multiple events in one's past that involved some sort of severe conflict; the fear can be centered on a body part, or,...
  
  (Maggie Gyllenhaal, Rupert Everett) (2011) (Informant Media Entertainment)
• The Lost Valentine
  The Lost Valentine
  The Lost Valentine is a 2011 American drama film starring Betty White, Jennifer Love Hewitt, and Sean Faris. It is based on the novel by James Michael Pratt of the same name, previously titled The Last Valentine, a 1998 New York Times and USA Today bestseller.-Plot:The story follows the characters...
  
  (Betty White, Jennifer Love Hewitt) (2011) (Hallmark Hall of Fame/CBS)
• The Kennedy Detail (2010) (Sunday Night Special)(Discovery)
• Gospel Hill
  Gospel Hill
  Gospel Hill is a 2008 film directed and produced by Giancarlo Esposito, who also stars in the film. The film was released on February 10, 2009 on DVD in the United States after being at numerous film festivals.-Plot:...
  
  (Danny Glover, Angela Bassett) (2008) (Fox)
• The Madam's Family (Ellen Burstyn, Annabella Sciorra) (2004)(CBS)
• Life or Something Like It
  Life or Something Like It
  Life or Something Like It is a 2002 romantic comedy film directed by Stephen Herek. The film focuses on television reporter Lanie Kerrigan and her quest to find meaning in her life. The original music score was composed by David Newman...
  
  (Angelina Jolie) (2002)(Fox)
• Joe Somebody
  Joe Somebody
  Joe Somebody is a 2001 American comedy-drama film written by John Scott Shepherd and directed by John Pasquin. The film stars Tim Allen as a man stirred into action by a workplace bully...
  
  (Tim Allen) (2001)(Fox)
• Shadow of Obsession (Veronica Hamel) (1994)(NBC)
• Falling Over Backwards (Saul Rubinek) (1990) (Astral)
• Amityville 4: The Evil Escapes (Patty Duke) (1989) (NBC)
• Shades of Love TV movie series (1987–1988) (Cinemax/HBO)ry)

Academic career

As a teaching fellow at Yale College

Yale College

Yale College was the official name of Yale University from 1718 to 1887. The name now refers to the undergraduate part of the university. Each undergraduate student is assigned to one of 12 residential colleges.-Residential colleges:...

, Atchity taught Greek comedy and Greek tragedy under Erich Segal

Erich Segal

Erich Wolf Segal was an American author, screenwriter, and educator. He was best-known for writing the novel Love Story , a best-seller, and writing the motion picture of the same name, which was a major hit....

; twentieth-century American literature with Michael Cowan; and The Modern Novel with Richard Ellmann. After leaving Yale, Atchity attained the rank of full professor of comparative literature at Occidental College in Los Angeles, 1970–86, where he received the Faculty Achievement Award; and Distinguished Instructor at UCLA Writers Program during the same years.

His academic honors include a Fulbright Professorship of American Literature at the University of Bologna

University of Bologna

The Alma Mater Studiorum - University of Bologna is the oldest continually operating university in the world, the word 'universitas' being first used by this institution at its foundation. The true date of its founding is uncertain, but believed by most accounts to have been 1088...

, Facolta di Lettere et Filosofia and Facolta di Magistero, Italy (1974–75) and grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities (1972) for work on Homer's Iliad; American Council of Learned Societies (1973, 1979) for work in Florence on Dante's Purgatorio and for delivering his study of "Narrative Strategies in Virgil and Cervantes" at the International Comparative Literature Association Conference in Innsbruck, Austria; the Mellon Awards for his seminar on structuralism, and for his study of Greek art and demotic Greek; and the Arnold L. and Lois S. Graves Award (1978) for study of Homer's Odyssey in Greece. He was author of several books and numerous poems, short stories, reviews, introductions, and articles in both scholarly publications and newspapers. For his poetry he received the Readers' Choice Award (1970), the National Federation of State Poetry Societies Lubbe Award (1971), as well as the Modern Award (1971).

While at Occidental, Atchity chaired the Literary Advisory Panel of the California Arts Council; was consultant on classical drama for the Mark Taper Forum; co-sponsored the Occidental Colloquia Series, founded the College's journalism internships, chaired the Visiting Poets Series, was director of graduate studies in comparative literature, and served on a number of faculty committees.

He was also guest columnist for The Los Angeles Times Book Review (1972–1988), and involved in creating The Los Angeles Times Book Awards. He served as Program Vice-president of P.E.N. Los Angeles; features editor of Moneysworth (1971), contributing editor of California State Poetry Quarterly (1972–75), San Francisco Review of Books (1977–81), Italia America (1977–79), and Literary Review (Edinburgh, Scotland, 1980–81); columnist, Western Publisher (1980); contributing editor and editorial board, Association for the Study of Dreams Newsletter 1984-1990); editor and publisher P.E.N. Los Angeles Center Yearbook (1983); editor of Contemporary Quarterly: Poetry & Art (Coordinating Council of Literary Magazines Grant; winner of Editor's Choice Award from the U.S. Small Press Association; and the California Institute of Design Award for Kathy Jacobi's logo) (1976–79), and Follies (California Council for the Humanities in Public Policy Grant) (1978–79).

With Marsha Kinder, Atchity was co-founder and -editor of DreamWorks: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly devoted to the relationship between dreams and the arts(Human Sciences Press, 1980–88; winner of Pushcart Prize, nominated by Joyce Carol Oates). DreamWorks' advisory board and published authors included Ursula LeGuin, Ernesto Cardenal, Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini, Paul Bowles, John Fowles, Yoram Kaniuk, William S. Burroughs, John Gardner, Dacia Maraini, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Ernest Sabato, Robert Penn Warren, A. E. Van Vogt, Hubert Selby, Jr., John Rechy, Stephen King, Georges Simenon, Carlos Fuentes, and Eugène Ionesco.

Writing career

Atchity's writing encompasses a wide spectrum of literary interests including scholarly and instructional books, essays, book and stage reviews, scholarly articles, short stories, and poems.

His work appeared in numerous journals and newspapers, including American Quarterly, Classical Philology, Comparative Literature Studies, Contemporary Literary Criticism, Italian Quarterly, Italica, The Kansas City Star, Kenyon Review, The Los Angeles Times, The New Haven Register, Philological Quarterly, Poem, Poetry LA, The San Francisco Chronicle, Thought, The Washington Post, and Western Humanities Review.

Atchity created the libretto for the choral symphony In Praise of Love, music by Bruce Prince-Joseph, which was performed by members of the New York Philharmonic at Lincoln Center in 1974 and "Homer," a three-part television from KNXT-TV.

He wrote and served as on-camera talent on the Renaissance (topics including "Folly," "The Golden Age," "Eldorado," "Brave New World," "God & Man," "Man as the Center of the Universe," "the Voyage"; and authors including Boethius, Dante, Erasmus, Shakespeare, Marlowe, Rabelais, Cervantes, and Elizabethan drama) for Synapse Technology's "Columbus: The Voyage of Discovery."

He also wrote introductions to English Literature: Shakespeare, Yearbook of American Poetry, Thomas Bergin's Under Scorpio, Ron Hogart's Hymns to Orpheus, and Marisa D'Vari's Creating Characters; and contributed to Saggi su Il Nome della Rosa. For Masterplots,Atchity contributed essays on Elizabethan drama and early British and French literature.

Books published

• How to Publish Your Novel (SquareOne) (2005);
• How to Escape Lifetime Security and Pursue Your Impossible Dream: A Guide to Transforming Your Career (Helios) (2004); revision of The Mercury Transition, below.
• Writing Treatments That Sell: How to Create and Market Your Story Ideas to the Motion Picture and TV Industry (with Chi-Li Wong) (Holt/Owl Books; Quality Paperbacks, Writers Digest Book Club) (Second Edition, 2003);
• The Classical Roman Reader (Holt 1997); (Oxford University Press 1998);
• The Classical Greek Reader (Holt, 1996); (Oxford University Press, 1998);
• The Renaissance Reader (HarperCollins, 1996); (Harper paperback, 1997).
• Cajun Household Wisdom (Longmeadow Press, 1995).
• The Mercury Transition: How to Escape Lifetime Security to Live Your Impossible Dream (Longmeadow Press, 1994).
• (editor) Homer: Critical Essays, including essays "Greek Princes and Aegean Princesses: The Role of Women in the Homeric Poems" (with E.J.W. Barber) and "Andromache's Headdress" (G. K. Hall) (1987);
• A Writer's Time: A Guide to the Creative Process, from Vision through Revision (W.W. Norton) (1986) (Quality Paperbacks, Book of the Month Club, Writer's Digest Book Club) (David & Charles paperback, United Kingdom, as Writing: Make the Most of Your Time New revised and expanded edition, A Writer's Time: Making Time to Write (1995) Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, in The New York Times review, called AWT "the best recent book on writing"; ISBN 0393312631
• Sleeping with an Elephant: Selected Poems, 1965-1976 (Valkyrie Press)(1978);
• Homer's Iliad: The Shield of Memory Introduction by John Gardner (Southern Illinois University Press) (1978);
• (co-editor and contributor) Italian Literature: Roots & Branches including his essay, "Dante's Purgatorio: The Poem Reveals Itself" (Yale University Press) (1976);
• In Praise of Love Libretto for choral symphony premiered at Lincoln Center (1974).
• (editor) Eterne in Mutabilitie: The Unity of the Faerie Queene (Archon) (1972).

Literary management career

Atchity's companies Atchity Entertainment International, Story Merchant, and The Writer's Lifeline have been responsible for launching numerous books and films. Based on his writing and teaching experience, Atchity has helped build bestselling careers for novelists, nonfiction writers, and screenwriters. AEI began operating as early as 1989 and was incorporated in 1996 to represent writers, storytellers, and creators of intellectual property. Since then it had placed hundreds of books with publishers at all levels and sold dozens of scripts to motion picture studios, broadcasters, and independent production companies.




Novels AEI developed and sold included Steve Alten's Meg (Doubleday-Bantam; Walt Disney Productions; New Line Productions), The Trench (Kensington), Domain (Tom Doherty & Associates), Goliath (Tom Doherty), Resurrection (Tom Doherty), Meg: Primal Waters (Tom Doherty); David Angsten's Dark Gold and Night of the Furies (Thomas Dunne Books); Royce Buckingham's Demonkeeper (Putnam; Fox 2000), Goblins, and Dead Boys; Nancy Freedman's Sappho: The Tenth Muse (St. Martin's); Alaya Johnson's Racing the Dark and The Burning City (Agate) and Moonshine (Thomas Dunne Books); John Robert Marlow's Nano (Forge); Noire's G-Spot (Ballantine), Candy Licker, Hood,, Thong on Fire, Unzipped (Ballantine), Lifestyles of the Rich and Shameless (Kensington); Shirley Palmer's Danger Zone and The Trade (Mira); James Michael Pratt's The Last Valentine, Paradise Bay, Ticket Home, The Lighthouse Keeper (St. Martin's); Tracy Price-Thompson; Cheryl Saban's Sins of the Mother (Dove); John Scott Shepherd's Henry's List of Wrongs and The Dead Father's Guide to Sex & Marriage (Atria); Dacre Stoker and Ian Holt's Dracula: The Un-Dead (Dutton); Larry Thompson's So Help Me God (Tom Doherty), The Trial, and Dead Peasants,(Thomas Dunne);




Nonfiction books include Barbara Berg How to Escape the No-Win Trap (McGraw-Hill); Peter Bielagus' Getting Loaded (NAL); Jerry Blaine and Lisa McCubbin's The Kennedy Detail (Gallery; Discovery Channel); Gary Buffone's The Myth of Tomorrow; Tim Hoerr's Thank God It's Monday (Everywhere Press); Gary and Joy Lundberg's I Don't Have to Make Everything All Better, Marriage: For Better or Worse (both Viking); The Learning Annex Series (Wiley); Bill & Cindy Paul's Shadow of an Indian Star; Carole Smith's The Magic Castle (St. Martin's); Jesse Ventura's I Ain't Got Time to Bleed, (Villard) Do I Stand Alone? (Atria); and Cindy Villareal's The Cheerleader's Guide to Life (HarperCollins).

Books he's managed have appeared on The New York Times Bestseller List, Publishers Weekly Bestseller Lst, The Los Angeles Times Bestseller List, USA Today Bestseller List, The Houston Chronicle Bestseller List, The Wall Street Journal Bestseller List, Walden Books Bestseller List, Walmart's Bestseller List, Barnes & Noble Bestseller List, The Minneapolis Star Tribune Bestseller List, The Washington Post Bestseller List, amazon.com Bestseller List, Essence Bestseller List, and many others.

Responding to paradigm shifts in the world of entertainment, in 2009 Atchity refocused his services, in addition to continuing to represent strategic writing clients , to raising independent financing for motion pictures--"turning writers into filmmakers"--as well as to pursuing Atchity and his partner Chi-Li Wong's producing interests; and to assisting entrepreneurial creators of intellectual property in launching worldwide brands, such as Nik Halik's Thrillionaires and Marcia Wieder's Dream University.

Consulting career

As a consultant in the motion picture business, writing and publishing, intellectual property management, the creative process, time-management, Atchity has given corporate seminars throughout the U.S.


He served on the Southern California Research Council (1973–76); was editorial advisor and member of the Business Executives Advisory Board (1981–82); co-directed the Research and Teacher Education (RATE) Project for the Pasadena Unified School District; was Evaluation Consultant for the African-American Urban Center; on classical drama for The Mark Taper Forum; and served on the Advisory Board of The Book Bridge.


Atchity also consulted for The Discovery Channel series, "The Power of Dreams"; for Marcia Wieder's Dream University; Nik Halik's Thrillionaires; Ripley's Believe-It-Or-Not!; Signature Celebrities; the Getty Museum; the University of Houston Continuing Education; Originaliti Media, Inc.; The Love It Club, Inc.; the LearningForum and its SuperCamp marketing outreach; United States Postal Service; International Video Management; and for Synapse Technologies.


In 1990, Atchity founded an editorial and development consulting company The Writer's Lifeline, Inc. as a kind of "farm team" for great ideas that are not yet ready for representation. Writer's Lifeline, responsible for over a dozen bestsellers, prepares intellectual property for the commercial marketplace by both mentoring and ghostwriting to bring craft and skill to support the creator's talent and vision. In 2010 he founded Story Merchant, a division of Writer's Lifeline through which Atchity provides personal strategic coaching to writers and creators of intellectual property.

Speaking career

In addition to radio, web, and television interviews on contemporary literature, creativity, dreams, myth, writing, producing, publishing, time-management, business expansion, brand launching, and various other academic and entertainment-publishing subjects, Atchity's public speaking has included classes, talks, workshops, seminars and inspirational keynote addresses at writers conferences, public libraries, corporate conventions, bar associations, social clubs, universities, and conferences throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe.

Education

Atchity graduated from Rockhurst High School, Kansas City's Jesuit high school, where he studied Latin, Greek, and French in the Honors Program. He was elected Editor-in-Chief of The Prep News, attended Missouri Boys State, and was awarded the Mnookin-Brown American Legion Writing Fellowship. He won an Ignatian Scholarship to Georgetown University. During high school, he also founded and edited The Rumble, a monthly newspaper for St. Elizabeth's Parish and began reviewing books for The Kansas City Star.

B.A. from Georgetown (English/Classics Honors Program; Eta Sigma Phi, National Classical Honors Fraternity; and the Virgilian Academy Medal for his mastery of Virgil's Aeneid). Editor-in-Chief, The Hoya; newscaster for WGTB-FM Radio from 1962-1965. His mentors at Georgetown included R. J. Schork, John Burroughs, Bernard Wagner, John McCall, Raymond Reno, and Joseph Sebes, S.J.

After graduating from Georgetown, Atchity was selected for A.T.& T.'s Immediate Management Development Program and was Communications Engineer, in charge of the N.A.S.A. Headquarters account, for Long Lines/Government Communications where he designed wideband communications for N.A.S.A.'s "green network," supervised public relations for the Gemini Missions, and was managementinstructor in business communications. After a year in the corporate world, he decided to further his study of languages and storytelling.

Entering Yale University School of Graduate Studies in Theater History, he went on to receive his M.Phil. and Ph.D. in Comparative Literature, supported by both a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship and an NDEA Title IV Fellowship. His mentors at Yale included Lowry Nelson, Jr., Thomas Bergin, A. Bartlett Giamatti, Thomas Greene, John Freccero, Dante Della Terza, and Davis Harding. Atchity's doctoral dissertation, "Homer's Iliad: The Song & Shield of Memory," received Yale's John Addison Porter Prize.

Languages: Latin, Homeric Greek, Classical Greek, Italian; French, Spanish, Provençal, German, conversational Japanese.

Memberships (past and present)

• Who's Who in America
• Contemporary Authors
• American Comparative Literature Association
• American Association of Teachers of Italian
• American Classical Association
• Greater Los Angeles Press Club
• Dante Society of America
• Directory of American Scholars
• P.E.N. Los Angeles Center
• Renaissance Society of America
• Producers Guild of America
• Vergilian Society
• Who's Who in California

External links

• Kenneth Atchity at the Internet Movie Database
  Internet Movie Database
  Internet Movie Database is an online database of information related to movies, television shows, actors, production crew personnel, video games and fictional characters featured in visual entertainment media. It is one of the most popular online entertainment destinations, with over 100 million...