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Meredith Sue Willis | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1946 (age 77–78) Clarksburg, West Virginia |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Nationality | American |
Meredith Sue Willis (born 1946 in Clarksburg, West Virginia), is a writer of short stories, novels for adults and for children, as well as non-fiction on the subject of creative writing. [1]
Willis graduated from Barnard College in 1969 and received an MFA from the Columbia University School of the Arts in 1972. [2]
A well-known speaker and writer about the teaching of writing, her own novels include A Space Apart, Higher Ground, Only Great Changes, Trespassers, Oradell at Sea, and Their Houses. Her short story collections include In the Mountains of America,Dwight's House and Other Stories, and Out of the Mountains. Her work has been praised in periodicals like The New York Times Book Review, The Nation, and The San Francisco Chronicle.
She has won major awards including literary fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, and her fiction has won prizes like the PEN Syndicated Fiction Award and the West Virginia Library Association Award (1980), [3] as well as the Chaffin Award for fiction.
An early writer-in-the-schools with Teachers and Writers Collaborative, she has turned many of her experiences teaching writing into three books for teachers and writers (Personal Fiction Writing, Deep Revision, and Blazing Pencils) and three novels for children (The Secret Super Powers of Marco,Marco's Monster, and Billie of Fish House Lane). She also wrote the highly praised how-to-write book Ten Strategies to Write Your Novel.
She is a past Distinguished Teaching Artist of the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.
Karen Louise Erdrich is a Native American author of novels, poetry, and children's books featuring Native American characters and settings. She is an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians of North Dakota, a federally recognized tribe of Ojibwe people.
Leslie Marmon Silko is an American writer. A woman of Laguna Pueblo descent, she is one of the key figures in the First Wave of what literary critic Kenneth Lincoln has called the Native American Renaissance.
Western fiction is a genre of literature set in the American Old West frontier and typically set from the late eighteenth to the late nineteenth century. Well-known writers of Western fiction include Zane Grey from the early 20th century and Louis L'Amour from the mid-20th century. The genre peaked around the early 1960s, largely due to the popularity of televised Westerns such as Bonanza. Readership began to drop off in the mid- to late 1970s and reached a new low in the 2000s. Most bookstores, outside a few west American states, only carry a small number of Western fiction books.
Manly Wade Wellman was an American writer. While his science fiction and fantasy stories appeared in such pulps as Astounding Stories, Startling Stories, Unknown and Strange Stories, Wellman is best remembered as one of the most popular contributors to the legendary Weird Tales and for his fantasy and horror stories set in the Appalachian Mountains, which draw on the native folklore of that region. Karl Edward Wagner referred to him as "the dean of fantasy writers." Wellman also wrote in a wide variety of other genres, including historical fiction, detective fiction, western fiction, juvenile fiction, and non-fiction.
Lee Smith is an American fiction writer who often incorporates her background from the American South in her works. She has received many writing awards, such as the O. Henry Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Fiction, and the North Carolina Award for Literature. Her novel The Last Girls was listed on the New York Times bestseller's list and won the Southern Book Critics Circle Award.
Sharyn McCrumb is an American writer best known for books that celebrate the history and folklore of Appalachia. McCrumb is the winner of numerous literary awards, and the author of the Elizabeth McPherson mystery series, the Ballad series, and the St. Dale series.
Richard Hague is an American poet and writer.
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.
Adriana Trigiani is an American best-selling author of eighteen books, playwright, television writer/producer, film director/screenwriter/producer, and entrepreneur based in New York City. Trigiani has published a novel a year since 2000.
Keith Maillard is an American Canadian novelist, poet, and professor of creative writing at the University of British Columbia. He moved to Canada in 1970 and became a Canadian citizen in 1976.
Paul Collins is an Australian writer and editor who specializes in science fiction and fantasy.
Gurney Norman is an American writer documentarian, and professor.
Ann Pancake is an American fiction writer and essayist. She has published a novel, short stories and essays describing the people and atmosphere of Appalachia, often from the first-person perspective of those living there. While fictional, her short stories contribute to an understanding of poverty in the 20th century, and well as the historical roots of American and rural poverty. Much of Pancake's writing also focuses on the destruction caused by natural resource extraction, particularly in Appalachia, and the lives of the people affected.
Mort Castle is an American horror author with more than 500 short stories and 17 books to his credit, including Cursed Be the Child and The Strangers. Castle's first novel was published in 1967. Since then he has had pieces published in all sorts of places ranging from traditional literary magazines to more off-the-wall or risqué markets. He has been nominated eleven times for the Bram Stoker Award for Short Fiction and was winner three times.
Silas Dwane House is an American writer best known for his novels. He is also a music journalist, environmental activist, and columnist. His fiction is known for its attention to the natural world, working-class characters, and the plight of the rural place and rural people. House is also known as a representative for LGBTQ Appalachians and Southerners, and is among the most visible LGBTQ people associated with rural America.
Pinckney Benedict is an American short-story writer and novelist whose work often reflects his Appalachian background.
Casey Clabough was an American writer, farmer, and professor in the Etowah Valley Writers MFA at Reinhardt University.
Karen Salyer McElmurray is an American writer of creative nonfiction and literary fiction. Her works include Wanting Radiance, The Motel of the Stars: A Novel, Surrendered Child: A Birth Mother’s Journey, and Strange Birds in the Tree of Heaven, as well as numerous essays and short stories. McElmurray was Editor’s Pick by Oxford American in November 2009. She was the recipient of the AWP Award for Creative Nonfiction (2003), and the Lillie Chaffin Award for Appalachian Writing (2001).
Sue Orr is a fiction writer, journalist and creative writing teacher from New Zealand.
Alberta Leona Pierson Hannum was an author best known for her best-selling novel Roseanna McCoy, a fictionalized account of the Hatfield-McCoy feud, which was turned into a motion picture in 1949 by RKO General.
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