Two Fictional Novels,The Wonder Book of the Air and The Celestial Jukebox
Spouse
Daniel Williams
Cynthia Shearer is an American novelist known for The Wonder Book of the Air and The Celestial Jukebox, southern literatures inspired from personal experiences growing up in Georgia and Mississippi. Shearer is a former curator for William Faulkner's Oxford home, Rowan Oak and retiree from Texas Christian University, where she now teaches as an adjunct faculty for the English Department.[1]
Cynthia Shearer was born on June 25, 1955, in Westover Air Force Base in Chicopee, Massachusetts. Less than a month after her birth, her family moved to Alapaha, Georgia, her parents' hometown. She describes Alapaha as a "small town where everyone knew everyone else's family tree, and life was simple."[2] Not long after their arrival to Alapaha did her parents divorced. Shearer remained with her mother, Marjorie E. Shearer, an English teacher through her high school years. In a 1997 interview, Shearer said that she "read more than anyone around [her], and . . . kept a journal every day."[3] In college, she pursued writing professionally and credits her college professor, Barry Hannah, for encouraging her to pursue writing.[3]
In the 1970s, Cynthia Shearer enrolled at Valdosta State College (now known as Valdosta State University). After earning her bachelor's degree in 1977, Cynthia Shearer moved to Oxford, Mississippi to pursue a master's degree in English from the University of Mississippi and graduated in 1979. It was in graduate school where she would meet her second husband, Daniel Williams (Dan, as she refers to him), at the time, an international professor from Germany.[4]
Published works and recognition
Shearer is known for authoring two works of fiction: The Wonder Book of the Air[5] and The Celestial Jukebox[6] Her first piece, The Wonder Book of the Air, won a 1996 prize from the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters. Her work has appeared in several publications like Tri-Quarterly, the Missouri Review, and the Oxford American. Shearer was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Fiction in 2000. Several of Shearer's short fiction, After O'Connor: Stories from Contemporary Georgia (2003) and The Oxford American Book of Great Music Writing (2008) work were selected in various anthologies.[7] In a journal article, the author references Shearer's second novel, The Celestial Jukebox, by citing the representation of the historic and social differences that are found in one of the several background groups found in her book, Chinese immigrants through the character, Angus Chien, the Chinese grocer.[8]
Shearer is known for curating Rowan Oak, William Faulkner's home in Oxford, Mississippi, for six years.[9] Shearer was inducted in 2018 to Georgia Writers Hall of Fame. The University of Georgia Libraries established the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame in 2000 to honor Georgia writers and expand Georgia literature and cultural history research.[10] She now teaches as an adjunct faculty for the English Department at Texas Christian University.[11] She retired from Texas Christian University's Center for Writing as an Assistant Director but continues to teach as an adjunct professor. She still lives in Fort Worth, Texas, with her husband, Dan, with whom she had a daughter in 1987.
References
↑ Hall, Joan Wylie (July 11, 2017). "Cynthia Shearer". Mississippi Encyclopedia. Center for Study of Southern Culture. Retrieved April 23, 2025.
↑ "Cynthia Shearer". Georgia Writers Hall of Fame. Georgia Writers Hall of Fame University of Georgia. Retrieved April 27, 2025.
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