In case you haven't guessed by now, I am of Irish descent! My family is officially a part of the Clan MacCarthy, which has its roots in Ireland and publishes The Stag Trippant Journal.

I earned a bachelor's degree in English from LaSalle College (now University) in Philadelphia, PA (1963), spent two years teaching English as a Foreign Language in the U.S. Peace Corps in Turkey (1963-65), earned a master's degree in American Literature (1966) and a doctorate in Linguistics (1970), both from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. For my doctoral research I spent a summer (1968) studying Arabic at the American University of Cairo in Egypt. My dissertation dealt with the ways that Modern Turkish has changed loanwords from other languages (Arabic, English, French, German, and Persian) to make them conform to the Turkish linguistic system. I then began teaching at the University of Florida in Gainesville.

After 37 years of teaching linguistics and writing in the Department of English at the University of Florida, I retired in December 2005. During that time I also taught for one year at the Lebanese National University in Beirut, Lebanon as a Fulbright Professor of English (1971-72) and two years at King Saud University in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia as a Fulbright Professor of English (1983-85). I taught writing workshops twice at Hanoi University in Hanoi, Vietnam, and also served as the executive director of the Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Society for eighteen years. The society has a wonderful meeting held in various locations around Florida each year in the spring. If you are interested in Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings's writings and Southern Literature in general, please consider joining the society and taking part in the annual spring meeting.

I have also testified as an "expert grammarian" in law cases dealing with the interpretation of language in contracts dealing with real estate, employee relations, and prenuptial contracts.

For several summers I taught a course on the Maritime History of Greece to American college students on the Greek island of Paros. My wife and I have twice taught English as volunteers in a week-long Spanish program, Pueblo Ingles, to Spanish businesspeople in a mountain village in northern Spain. We also spend a month each year lecturing on cruise ships sailing in and around Europe and the Caribbean. We have been on 33 such lecture cruises.

I have had 53 books published, mostly about Florida history, culture, and sports. See below for pictures of the covers of those books and for pictures of the covers of magazines that I have published articles in.

I am married and have four children.

Kevin McCarthy's email address: kevinkadin@yahoo.com


Last updated: January 5, 2012