The Rumpus.net » southern writers http://therumpus.net Books, Music, Movies, Art, Politics, Sex, Other Thu, 20 Jun 2013 07:01:29 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 Jesmyn Ward Tells It Like It Is http://therumpus.net/2009/09/jesmyn-ward-tells-it-like-it-is/ http://therumpus.net/2009/09/jesmyn-ward-tells-it-like-it-is/#comments Fri, 04 Sep 2009 16:00:26 +0000 Melissa Tan http://therumpus.net/?p=31186 Jesmyn Ward is a long way away from the environment she writes about, yet she is lauded as a southern author with the ability to capture the essence of her home.  Ward, who is currently entering her second year as a Stegner Fellow at Stanford, is working on her second novel about the residents of a rural southern town based on her own home of DeLisle, Mississippi (the namesake of the DeLisle twins in Ward’s debut novel, Where the Line Bleeds).

]]> Jesmyn Ward is a long way away from the environment she writes about, yet she is lauded as a southern author with the ability to capture the essence of her home.  Ward, who is currently entering her second year as a Stegner Fellow at Stanford, is working on her second novel about the residents of a rural southern town based on her own home of DeLisle, Mississippi (the namesake of the DeLisle twins in Ward’s debut novel, Where the Line Bleeds).

Ward talked to Fiction Writers Review about the development of her second novel, which, reflecting the family community inherent in small southern towns, is once again set in the fictional town of Bois Sauvage and revolves around characters introduced in Where The Line Bleeds.  Ward also discussed the many stereotypes facing southern writers, particularly one who is southern, black, and a woman.

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]]> http://therumpus.net/2009/09/jesmyn-ward-tells-it-like-it-is/feed/ 0 Novelist disappears into illness, addiction http://therumpus.net/2009/06/novelist-disappears-into-illness-addiction/ http://therumpus.net/2009/06/novelist-disappears-into-illness-addiction/#comments Tue, 23 Jun 2009 18:00:51 +0000 Mark Pritchard http://therumpus.net/?p=23148 Kaye Gibbons, author of the 1987 debut best-seller Ellen Foster and several subsequent novels, is the subject of an Associated Press profile published in several newspapers and Sunday book sections over the weekend. The article traces her downfall from “vivacious” best-selling author to her 2008 arrest for forging hydrocodone prescriptions to her disappearance into mental illness.

]]> Kaye Gibbons, author of the 1987 debut best-seller Ellen Foster and several subsequent novels, is the subject of an Associated Press profile published in several newspapers and Sunday book sections over the weekend. The article traces her downfall from “vivacious” best-selling author to her 2008 arrest for forging hydrocodone prescriptions to her disappearance into mental illness.

Enriching the picture is a 2006 Minneapolis Star-Tribune profile which says Gibbons declares “I decided and had it confirmed that I’d been misdiagnosed with bipolar disorder for years and years… I stopped taking all medications.” Unfortunately, when someone who has been treated for bipolar illness for years “decides” she has been misdiagnosed and stops taking her medications, little good usually comes of it.

Curiously, there is a hint of addiction even on her author page on her literary agency’s website, where she says finishing a book requires “more Diet Cokes than most people can or want to tolerate.” The statement is undated, as is the accompanying picture, clearly taken long before her arrest mug shot.

After pleading guilty to misdemeanor drug charges and serving a 90-day suspended sentence, Gibbons is reported to be delivering anti-drug talks at high schools and working on a new novel set in Reconstruction-era New Orleans.

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