October 24, 1996
Contact: Lew Harris, (615) 322-2706
Novelist Ellen Douglas
to read from her fiction at Vanderbilt
NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Novelist Ellen Douglas, the pen name of Josephine
Haxton, will read from her fiction Nov. 6 as part of the Vanderbilt English
Department's Gertrude Vanderbilt and Harold S. Vanderbilt Visiting Writers'
Series.
The program is slated for 8 p.m. in Room 126 of Wilson Hall. The Visiting
Writers' Series is made possible through an endowment fund. Members of the
community are invited to attend.
Douglas is the author of many novels, including "Apostles of Light,"
a finalist for the National Book Award. Another novel, "The Rock Cried
Out," won the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Literature
Award. Douglas also wrote "Can't Quit Now, Baby," in 1988 with
the assistance of a grant from the National Endowment of the Arts. In 1989
The Fellowship of Southern Writers presented her with an award for the body
of her work.
Born Josephine Ayres in Natchez, Miss., in 1921, she grew up in small towns
in Mississippi, Louisiana and Arkansas. She currently resides in Jackson,
Miss. She has served as writer-in- residence at Northeast Louisiana for
four years and at the University of Mississippi for eight years. She has
been a visiting professor at the University of Virginia and Hollins College,
as well as being Welty Professor at Millsaps College. She also served on
the faculty of the Sewanee Writers' Conference for five years.
Douglas' first published novel, "A Family's Affairs," won a Houghton
Mifflin Fellowship in 1961 and was included in the New York Times list of
the five best novels of the year in 1962. Her 1963 novel, "Black Cloud,
White Cloud," was named one of the 10 best works of fiction that year
by the New York Times.
Along with her novels, Douglas has published a book of fairy tales, "The
Magic Carpet." Her short story, "Grant," was selected for
the 1996 O. Henry Prize Stories.
-VU-
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