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Josephine Humphreys | |
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| Born | February 2, 1945 Charleston, South Carolina, U.S. |
| Occupation | Novelist |
| Period | 1984–present |
| Genre | Southern literature Historical fiction |
Josephine Humphreys (born February 2, 1945) [1] is an American novelist.
|
Josephine Humphreys | |
|---|---|
| Born | February 2, 1945 Charleston, South Carolina, U.S. |
| Occupation | Novelist |
| Period | 1984–present |
| Genre | Southern literature Historical fiction |
Josephine Humphreys (born February 2, 1945) [1] is an American novelist.
Josephine Humphreys grew up in Charleston, South Carolina with her mother, father and two sisters (Vinh). Her father worked as the director of the Charleston development board. Her mother worked for the Charleston Museum (Josephine Humphreys full-length interview for Envision SC). Humphreys was encouraged to write by her grandmother Neta, and later by her mother. All the books she read were inherited from her grandparents or came from the public library (Vinh). The all-girl school she attended had an excellent writing program and a literary magazine, according to Humphreys. After graduating from high school, she attended Duke University because her father believed it was a "southern college" and he was against her attending any "northern school." What her father did not realize, though, was that Duke was anything but the "southern school" he imagined (Josephine Humphreys full-length interview for Envision SC). Her class was the first racially integrated undergraduate class. For four years this didn't seem to be an issue, until their graduation day, when there was a bomb threat from the Ku Klux Klan, resulting in Humphreys' class canceling its graduation ceremony.
A native of Charleston, South Carolina, which is also the setting of her novels Dreams of Sleep, Rich in Love and The Fireman's Fair, Humphreys was educated at Ashley Hall (Class of 1963), studied creative writing with Reynolds Price at Duke University (A.B., 1967), and went on to attend Yale University (M.A., 1968) and the University of Texas. She held fellowships from the Woodrow Wilson Foundation and the Danforth Foundation. From 1970 to 1977, before beginning her writing career, she taught English in Charleston.
While her first three novels are mainly about contemporary family life in the South, her fourth, Nowhere Else on Earth, is a departure in that it is an historical novel based on the true story of Rhoda Strong and Henry Berry Lowrie from the American Civil War era. It won the Southern Book Award in 2001.
Rich in Love, probably her best-known novel, was made into a 1992 film of the same title directed by Bruce Beresford, from a screenplay by Alfred Uhry, starring Albert Finney and Jill Clayburgh.
Humphreys was the winner of the 1984 Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for Dreams of Sleep, and the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Lyndhurst Prize, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature.
Many of Humphreys' novels have been inspired not only by the landscape of Charleston but also from her own life. Many of her characters represent a personal metaphor(Vinh). Most books represent a form of family and community because that was important to Humphreys. Most importantly they reflect Charleston and how its changed from when she was a child to now. One book in particular, Fireman's Fair was rewritten in three months because of the hurricane and its significant impact on the landscape(Magee).
Ashley Hall is a private school located in Charleston, South Carolina enrolling students in kindergarten through grade 12 with a co-educational pre-k programl. It was founded in 1909 by Mary Vardrine McBee, who headed the institution for many years. It is the only all-girls' independent private school in South Carolina.The school motto is Possunt Quae Volunt, or "Girls who have the will have the ability."
Anne Tyler is an American novelist, short story writer, and literary critic. She has published twenty-four novels, including Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant (1982), The Accidental Tourist (1985), and Breathing Lessons (1988). All three were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and Breathing Lessons won the prize in 1989. She has also won the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize, the Ambassador Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 2012 she was awarded The Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence. Tyler's twentieth novel, A Spool of Blue Thread, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2015, and Redhead By the Side of the Road was longlisted for the same award in 2020. She is recognized for her fully developed characters, her "brilliantly imagined and absolutely accurate detail", her "rigorous and artful style", and her "astute and open language."
Susanna Moore is an American writer and teacher. Born in Pennsylvania but raised in Hawaii, Moore worked as a model and script reader in Los Angeles and New York City before beginning her career as a writer. Her first novel, My Old Sweetheart, published in 1982, earned a PEN Hemingway nomination, and won the Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She followed this with The Whiteness of Bones in 1989, and her third novel, Sleeping Beauties, in 1993. All three of these novels were set in Hawaii and charted dysfunctional family relationships.
Dorothy Allison is an American writer from South Carolina whose writing focuses on class struggle, sexual abuse, child abuse, feminism and lesbianism. She is a self-identified lesbian femme. Allison has won a number of awards for her writing, including several Lambda Literary Awards. In 2014, Allison was elected to membership in the Fellowship of Southern Writers.
Josephine Louise Miles was an American poet and literary critic; the first woman tenured in the English department at the University of California, Berkeley. She wrote over a dozen books of poetry and several works of criticism. She was a foundational scholar of quantitative and computational methods, and is considered a pioneer of the field of digital humanities. Benjamin H. Lehman and Josephine Miles' interdepartmental "Prose Improvement Project" was the basis for James Gray's Bay Area Writing Project, which later become the National Writing Project. The "Prose Improvement Project" was one of the first efforts at creating a writing across the curriculum program.
Septima Poinsette Clark was an African American educator and civil rights activist. Clark developed the literacy and citizenship workshops that played an important role in the drive for voting rights and civil rights for African Americans in the Civil Rights Movement. Septima Clark's work was commonly under-appreciated by Southern male activists. She became known as the "Queen mother" or "Grandmother" of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. Martin Luther King Jr. commonly referred to Clark as "The Mother of the Movement". Clark's argument for her position in the Civil Rights Movement was one that claimed "knowledge could empower marginalized groups in ways that formal legal equality couldn't."
Jayne Anne Phillips is an American novelist and short story writer who was born in the small town of Buckhannon, West Virginia.
The Specky Magee series is a highly popular and best-selling children’s book series in Australia. The books, written by Felice Arena and renowned Aussie Rules player Garry Lyon, chronicle the life and times of teenager Simon Magee, an aspiring Aussie Rules football champion. There are currently eight books in the series. Lyon and Arena agreed to stop writing after they realized the plots were getting more and more ridiculous with each novel.
Denise Giardina is an American novelist. Her book Storming Heaven was a Discovery Selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club and received the 1987 W. D. Weatherford Award for the best published work about the Appalachian South. The Unquiet Earth received an American Book Award and the Lillian Smith Book Award for fiction. Her 1998 novel Saints and Villains was awarded the Boston Book Review fiction prize and was semifinalist for the International Dublin Literary Award. Giardina is an ordained Episcopal Church deacon, a community activist, and a former candidate for governor of West Virginia.
Christine Magee is the co-founder and president of Sleep Country Canada. In October 1994, she co-founded the company with Stephen K. Gunn and Gordon Lownds. By 2004, the company had expanded to 89 stores, with over 600 employees and operations in three provinces. Magee is on the board of directors for McDonald's Canada, Cott Corporation and Telus.
Josephine Lyons Scott Pinckney was a novelist and poet in the literary revival of the American South after World War I. Her first best-selling novel was the social comedy, Three O'clock Dinner (1945).
The Notebook is a 2004 American romantic drama film directed by Nick Cassavetes, with a screenplay by Jeremy Leven and Jan Sardi, based on the 1996 novel of the same name by Nicholas Sparks. The film stars Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams as a young couple who fall in love in the 1940s. Their story is read from a notebook in the present day by an elderly man, telling the tale to a fellow nursing home resident.
Rich in Love is a 1992 drama film directed by Bruce Beresford and starring Albert Finney, Kathryn Erbe, Kyle MacLachlan, Jill Clayburgh, Suzy Amis, and Ethan Hawke. It is based on the 1987 novel Rich in Love by Josephine Humphreys.
I Love You, Beth Cooper is a comedy novel written by former Simpsons writer Larry Doyle. I Love You, Beth Cooper follows a high school graduate who confesses his love for a cheerleader during his valedictorian speech. The novel was made in a 2009 film of the same name, starring Hayden Panettiere and Paul Rust.
Amy M. Homes is an American writer best known for her controversial novels and unusual short stories, which feature extreme situations and characters. Notably, her novel The End of Alice (1996) is about a convicted child molester and murderer.
Starcrossed is a fantasy paranormal romance novel by American author Josephine Angelini. The story follows a girl named Helen Hamilton, who is gradually revealed to be a modern-day Helen of Troy. After discovering her heritage, Helen learns that a union with the boy she loves may trigger a new Trojan War. The novel was followed by the sequels Dreamless and Goddess, and received praise from critics and fantasy authors amidst its release.
Ottessa Charlotte Moshfegh is an American author and novelist. Her debut novel, Eileen (2015), won the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and was a fiction finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Moshfegh's subsequent novels include My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Death in Her Hands, and Lapvona.
Crazy Rich Asians is a satirical 2013 romantic comedy novel by Kevin Kwan. Kwan stated that his intention in writing the novel was to "introduce a contemporary Asia to a North American audience". He claimed the novel was loosely based on his own childhood in Singapore. The novel became a bestseller and was followed by two sequels, China Rich Girlfriend in 2015 and Rich People Problems in 2017. A film adaptation of the novel was released on August 15, 2018.
There have been many creative works set in Charleston, South Carolina. In addition, Charleston is a popular filming location for movies and television, both in its own right and as a stand-in for Southern and/or historic settings.
The literature of South Carolina, United States, includes fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. Representative authors include Dorothy Allison, Daniel Payne and William Gilmore Simms.
Josephine Humphreys Full Length Interview for Envision SC. 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yr7rF3qsdcQ.
Magee, Rosemary M. “Continuity and Separation: An Interview with Josephine Humphreys.” The Southern Review, vol. 27, no. 4, 1991 Autumn 1991, pp. 792–802. mzh. Vinh, Alphonse. “Talking with Josephine Humphreys.” The Southern Quarterly: A Journal of the Arts in the South, vol. 32, no. 4, 1994 Summer 1994, pp. 131–40. mzh.
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