Ellen Douglas
Ellen Douglas was the pen name of Josephine Ayres Haxton (July 12, 1921 – November 7, 2012), an American author.[1] Her 1973 novel Apostles of Light was a National Book Award nominee.
Biography
Douglas was born in Natchez, Mississippi and grew up in Hope, Arkansas, and Alexandria, Louisiana. She graduated from the University of Mississippi in 1942.[2] She later taught writing there. She adopted the pen name Ellen Douglas before the publication of A Family’s Affairs to protect the privacy of two aunts, on whose lives she had based much of the plot.[3]
Douglas died of heart failure at the age of 91 on November 7, 2012.[4]
Margalit Fox writes that Douglas's work "explored the epochal divide between the Old South and the New, examining vast, difficult subjects — race relations, tensions between the sexes, the conflict between the needs of the individual and those of the community — through the small, clear prism of domestic life."[3]
Selected bibliography
Novels and stories
- A Family's Affairs (1961)
- Black Cloud, White Cloud: Two Novellas and Two Stories (1963)
- "On the Lake," in Prize Stories 1963 (1963)
- Where The Dreams Cross (1968)
- Apostles of Light (Houghton Mifflin 1973)
- The Rock Cried Out (1979)
- A Lifetime Burning (Random House 1982)
- A Long Night (1986)
- The Magic Carpet and Other Tales (1987)
- Can't Quit You, Baby (Scribner 1988)
Nonfiction
- Truth: Four Stories I Am Finally Old Enough to Tell (Algonquin Books 1998) ISBN 978-1-565-12214-7
- Witnessing (University Press of Mississippi 2004) ISBN 978-1-578-06670-4
References
- ↑ Paterson, Judith (July 10, 1988). Southern Discomforts. Washington Post
- ↑ Associated Press (June 9, 2008). Author Ellen Douglas to be honored. USA Today
- 1 2 "Ellen Douglas, Novelist of Southern Life, Dies at 91". New York Times. November 12, 2012. Retrieved July 8, 2015.
- ↑ "Miss. author Ellen Douglas dies at 91; was National Book Award nominee for Apostles of Light". The Washington Post. November 8, 2012. Retrieved November 8, 2012.