OXFORD, Miss. – National Book Award winner Ellen Gilchrist
agreed to come home to Mississippi for the 15th Oxford
Conference for the Book because the timing was good.
Gilchrist, who lives part time on the Mississippi Gulf
Coast, is scheduled to make her first book conference
appearance April 5 in a panel discussion led by artist Bill
Dunlap. The 2 p.m. session is to be held at the University
of Mississippi’s Nutt Auditorium. Hosted by UM April 2-5,
the conference is dedicated to writer, folklorist and
anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston.
When Gilchrist is not spending time with family at her home
in Ocean Springs, she lives in Fayetteville, Ark., where
several years ago she honed her fiction under the
instruction of Bill Harrison and others in the MFA program
at the University of Arkansas. Although she didn’t complete
the coursework for the MFA, she learned enough to publish a
well-received collection of short stories, “In the Land of
Dreamy Dreams,” (Little, Brown and Co., 1980), soon after
leaving the program. Her second book, the story collection
“Victory over Japan,” (Back Bay Books, 1984) won the
National Book Award for Fiction in 1984.
Gilchrist’s other published works include two poetry
collections, a book of essays, six novels and 13 short
story collections, including “Collected Stories,” which
appeared in 2000. Also published that year was “Falling
through Space” (Faber and Faber), the personal narratives
that first aired as a series of commentaries on National
Public Radio’s Morning Edition.
A Vicksburg native, Gilchrist joined the faculty of the MFA
program at Arkansas in 2000, in part, she says, so that she
might feel closer to her grandchildren. “I started teaching
the year my oldest grandchild went to Duke,” she said.
“Teaching has allowed me to enter the world of my
grandchildren. It’s wonderful to be and talk with people
that age.”
Besides teaching, Gilchrist still writes. In May, Algonquin
Books of Chapel Hill is scheduled to release “A Dangerous
Age.” Gilchrist’s seventh novel and her first work of
longer fiction in more than a decade, the book tells the
story of three female cousins from a tradition-rich
Southern family as they attempt to cope with an ongoing
war. If previous critical reception is any indication – the
Washington Post has said that Gilchrist should be
considered a “national cultural treasure” – this novel
stands to join the ranks of first-class contemporary
fiction with Gilchrist’s many other books.
For more information on the Oxford Conference for the Book,
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