Queen's Gambit

Author's Name: Walter Tevis

According to the story, the first chess player to be featured on the cover of the famous “Sports Illustrated” magazine was not the genius Bobby Fischer, but a female chess player named Lisa Lane in 1961. A few years earlier, Fischer had become a grandmaster at the age of 14, after winning the national championship. He was on his way to winning the world title, which he won in 1972 after defeating the legendary Russian player Boris Spassky, in what was later called “the game of the century.” But when Lisa Lane appeared on the cover of the magazine, according to the story, she became the undisputed beauty of chess, amid Fischer’s famous saying, “Women cannot play chess” or “They are all weak and stupid compared to men,” and they should not play chess because they always lose to men.

Walter "Walt" Stone Tevis (February 28, 1928 – August 9, 1984) was an American novelist and short story writer. After being discharged, he graduated from the Laboratory Model School in 1945. He attended the University of Kentucky, where he earned B.A. (1949) and M.A. (1954) degrees in English literature. While studying there, Tevis worked in a pool hall and published a story about pool written for a Guthrie class. He later attended the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where he earned an M.A. in creative writing in 1960. Tevis taught English literature and creative writing at The Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, from 1965 to 1978, where he was appointed a professor. Tevis was a member of the Authors Guild.