NOMINATION COVER SHEET
2017 Virginia Outstanding Faculty Awards
1. NAME
Full (Legal):
John Gregory Brown
Preferred First Name: John Gregory
2. INSTITUTIONAL INFORMATION
3. PROFESSIONAL INFORMATION
Rank/Position Title:
Specialization/Field: Creative Writing
Year Rank/Title Attained:
Type of Terminal Degree/Year Awarded
/Awarding Institution:
Institution: Sweet Briar College
Julia Jackson Nichols Professor of English,
Director of Creative Writing, and Cameron Fellow
Academic Discipline: English
1994-Director; 2000-Professor;
2010-Cameron Fellow
MA in the Writing Seminars/1988/Johns Hopkins University
Years at Institution: 21
MA in English/1984/Louisiana State University
Campus Email Address: [email protected]
Campus Phone: 434-381-6434
4. PERSONAL INFORMATION
Campus Mailing Address:
English Dept., 204 Fletcher; 134 Chapel Road;
Sweet Briar College; Sweet Briar VA 24595
Campus Communications Contact:
Name: Joelle Ziemian
E-mail: [email protected]
Please check only one box:
RESEARCH/DOCTORAL INSTITUTION NOMINEE:
MASTERS/COMPREHENSIVE INSTITUTION NOMINEE:
BACCALAUREATE INSTITUTION NOMINEE: X
TWO-YEAR INSTITUTION NOMINEE:
RISING STAR NOMINEE:
Table of Contents
Cover Sheet ................................................................................................................................................................... 1
Mission Statement ........................................................................................................................................................ 2
Summary of Accomplishments ...................................................................................................................................... 3
Personal Statement ....................................................................................................................................................... 9
Abbreviated Curriculum Vitae .................................................................................................................................... 11
Letters of Support (Excerpted) .................................................................................................................................... 13
Additional Documentation .......................................................................................................................................... 16
Signature (President or Chief Academic Officer) _______________________________________________________
Printed Name: __Pamela DeWeese, Dean and Vice President for Academic Affairs___________________
E-mail address: [email protected]_______________________ Telephone: ____434-381-6205____________
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Sweet Briar College Mission Statement
Sweet Briar College prepares women (and at the graduate level, men as well) to be productive,
responsible members of a world community. It focuses on personal and professional
achievement through a customized educational program that combines the liberal arts,
preparation for careers, and individual development. The faculty and staff guide students to
become active learners, to reason clearly, to speak and write persuasively, and to lead with
integrity. They do so by creating an educational environment that is both intense and supportive
and where learning occurs in many different venues, including the classroom, the community
and the world.
Excerpts from the Sweet Briar College Statement of Purpose in Support of the Mission
Sweet Briar's curriculum is organized on the premise that a foundation in the liberal arts
enhances the development of critical and creative abilities, develops the ability to synthesize
disparate information, equips the student for graduate and professional education, and
encourages her to continue to learn long after leaving Sweet Briar.
A broadly based academic program teaches the student to view her experience within wide
contexts, to appreciate the achievements of the past, to understand the methods and major
theories of science, to gain an appreciation of the arts, and to communicate with precision and
cogency. A highly qualified faculty, committed to the highest standards of teaching, engages
individuals on a human scale. In small classes, students receive the attention that encourages
self-confidence and the improvement of skills for life and livelihood.
Sweet Briar continues its commitment as an independent undergraduate women's college in
order to devote its resources to the education of women in the full range of the liberal arts,
including those subjects that have been traditionally considered as male domains.
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Summary of Accomplishments
In 1994 when John Gregory Brown joined Pulitzer-Prize-winning poet Mary Oliver on the
creative writing faculty at Sweet Briar College, he was offered a rare opportunity for a young
novelist and professor: to reimagine, develop, and then guide a creative writing program, one
that would, over the next two decades, grow to become one of the college’s most distinctive and
popular programs, hosting distinguished authors from around the world and producing
accomplished graduates who have used their writing and analytical skills in a wide array of
professions. They have become journalists, educators, lawyers, authors, social justice
advocates, and entrepreneurs. They have completed graduate work in a host of academic
fields, including chemistry, government, international relations, and art history. They have
opened businesses and raised children and have kept in touch with the professor whose
classes they consistently declare, as one graduate wrote, “the toughest, most exhausting but
most rewarding” of their college careers.
In addition to teaching creative writing workshops and directing the creative writing program,
Professor Brown has contributed to Sweet Briar College in numerous ways. He has taught
honors seminars ranging from the literature of 9/11 to the Contemporary World Epic; he has
organized three International Writers Series that featured lectures and readings by authors such
as Nobel laureate Derek Walcott, Booker Prize-winner Salman Rushdie, Iranian American
scholar Azar Nafisi, and other writers from countries including China, South Africa, Somalia,
Nigeria, India, Mexico, Poland, England, and France. In response to the SACS reaccreditation
requirement that the college implement a Quality Enhancement Program (QEP), he proposed
and then led the college’s adoption of a first-year program (y:1) designed to improve incoming
students’ academic engagement. He helped organize and then chaired the college’s first
diversity committee; he led a decade-long effort to persuade the college to conduct an
accessibility audit; and he arranged for and then coordinated the international law firm of White
& Case’s pro bono representation of faculty and staff in opposing the effort to close the college
and in securing severance for all employees who left the college in the wake of the announced
closure.
Professor Brown is also the award-winning author of four highly-acclaimed novels:
• Decorations in A Ruined Cemetery, of which the New York Times wrote, “the label ‘first
novel’ seems grudging and dismissive. Artistry like this is unclassifiable.”
• The Wrecked, Blessed Body of Shelton Lafleur, which the Times of London declared “a
staggering achievement.”
• Audubon’s Watch, hailed by the New York Times Book Review as “a brazen
performance that few authors would have the skill or the courage to risk.”
• A Thousand Miles from Nowhere, which the New York Times Book Review described as
“a deeply humane look at the vulnerability of black lives, the changing contours of the
New South and the restorative potential of literature in the aftermath of catastrophe.”
As a teacher, faculty leader, practicing artist, and community member – he and his family have
lived on campus throughout their two decades at Sweet Briar – John Gregory Brown has strived
to live up to the college’s mission of “creating an educational environment that is both intense
and supportive and where learning occurs in many different venues, including the classroom,
the community, and the world.”
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Teaching
Professor Brown is fond of claiming that, as a novelist, he is an expert at nothing except making
up stories. His student evaluations suggest, though, that teaching is clearly another area of
expertise. His workshops – and his teaching style – are described by students as intense, lively,
intimidating, exciting, challenging, demanding, and boisterous. The syllabus for each class
reminds students that “an appreciation for literature begins with enthusiasm.” Through that
enthusiasm, by being open to the art they encounter, he tells them, they will learn to identify
what makes a particular text interesting, entertaining, informative, or compelling, and they will
begin to understand the relation between literary texts and life itself and how the formal qualities
of a particular literary genre may be used by the writer to explore the various subtleties,
difficulties, moral dilemmas, and triumphs that are a part of being human.
Again and again, students comment that Professor Brown’s classroom demeanor is
dynamic and that his courses challenge them to dig deeper, to try harder, to learn more:
• “His presence in the classroom is so huge it’s hard to describe, but I would start with
electric, inspiring, intuitive, and joyful.”
• “His assertiveness to make you want to do better and his determination to not see you
do poor quality work are definitely why the class is so engaging.”
• “This course has forced me to think in a more critical and analytical manner. He’s
pushy but only to challenge students.”
• “He gives us a hard time but only because he knows we’re capable of doing great
things; he pushes us to achieve them.”
For many years, Professor Brown has created class blogs on which students contribute their
observations and analyses of the texts they’ve been assigned, and students have been
delighted to discover that from time to time the authors of these texts engage with the students
and express their appreciation of the students’ comments on their work. Professor Brown also
invites visiting writers into the classroom to meet with students and offer their insights on the
craft of writing and how this pursuit has shaped their lives.
One measure of Professor Brown’s success as a teacher is that his students have gone on to
attend many of the most prestigious graduate creative writing programs in the country, including
the University of Virginia, Johns Hopkins University, the University of Massachusetts, Hollins
University, the University of New Orleans, the University of Pittsburgh, and the University of
Notre Dame. But he is equally proud of those students who make use of the empathy and
understanding they gain from the study and practice of creative writing to pursue other careers.
I credit my evolution to John Gregory Brown. He was a miraculous professor and advisor. He
recognized (when I was only 20 years old) that I possessed a talent that had the potential to
transform into success, and he helped guide me into that talent. I was in my spring semester of
2003 when John joked with me, “I’m just waiting for you to get your MFA in Poetry.” After this
conversation, I shredded my law school applications, and within months, I received word from the
University of Pittsburgh that I was accepted to their MFA Poetry program. I am now Assistant
Professor of Poetry at Columbia College Chicago, and a published writer of poetry and creative
non-fiction.
—C. M. Burroughs, SBC Class of 2004
Professor Brown’s lessons have been informing my career and life for 20+ years. He taught me
the discipline of good writing, and helped me know how to avoid writing badly. He also gave me
my motto: “Raise the stakes.” This commandment helped me establish an early reputation for
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incisive writing and has been key to making me one of CNN’s top editors. It titles one of the
sections in CNN’s guide to composing headlines, which I wrote last year. Best of all, when I find
myself bored or dissatisfied in my life, I know how to start fixing things. His teaching still
influences me, and through me influences some of the top writers and editors in the news
industry, both young and experienced.
—Nicole J.M. File, SBC Class of 1995, Senior Copy Editor, CNN
In addition to his creative writing workshops, Professor Brown has taught children’s literature,
world literature, and biographical literature at Sweet Briar, and he has overseen both summer
honors research and senior honors projects. In response to the SACS mandate that the college
develop a Quality Enhancement Program (QEP), he proposed and then oversaw the
implementation of the college’s y:1 program, the aim of which was to increase entering students’
academic engagement – and, eventually, student retention – by having the college’s most gifted
professors in a variety of disciplines offer first-year seminars each fall tied to a particular theme
and common text. Students in this program were offered iPads and specific technological
training and were asked to attend a series of lectures, film screenings, and discussions as part
of their participation. Professor Brown worked with every administrative and academic office to
implement this program and served as the program’s director for its inaugural year.
Professor Brown’s colleague, Christy Cole, SBC’s Director of Institutional Research and its
liaison to SACS, who worked with him for eighteen months developing, writing, and submitting
the successful Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP) to SACS, states:
During that time, Professor Brown displayed a passion for the learning, engagement, and wellbeing of the students, as well as his deeply-felt commitment to the College and its mission. The
QEP concept initially developed and proposed to the faculty by Professor Brown was designed
to accelerate first-year students’ intellectual and academic engagement, provide opportunities
for first-year students to improve their critical thinking and digital literacy skills, and increase the
persistence of first-year students.
Discovery
Professor Brown is a novelist of true distinction, widely recognized by his peers and by critics as
one of the country’s finest contemporary Southern writers. His novels have been reviewed in
nearly every major newspaper in this country, with many reviewers comparing his work to that of
the South’s most highly esteemed writers: Flannery O’Connor, Walker Percy, Eudora Welty,
Reynolds Price, and William Faulkner. Literary scholars have cited and discussed his work in
their articles and books.
Professor Brown’s first novel, Decorations in A Ruined Cemetery received the Lillian Smith
Award and, in England, the John Steinbeck Award. It is the story of a family’s disintegration in
1960’s New Orleans and explores the complex intertwining of race, religious faith, and family
history in the lives of a widowed physician, his two children, and the African American man
employed by the family. Upon the novel’s publication, literary scholar and American University
professor Charles Larson wrote in the Chicago Tribune, “What Brown’s novel renders so
elegantly is the entrenchment of abandonment and sorrow, of deceit and mendacity, from one
generation to the next...Much of the magnificence of Decorations in a Ruined Cemetery is the
result of the author’s decision to create imaginative voices other than his own. Of the three
narrators of his story, two are female and the third is an African-American man. To use those
voices must have been a challenge for the writer, but the decision was a triumph for his novel.
John Gregory Brown is both the beneficiary of and a worthy successor to our finest Southern
writers.” The New York Times Book Review added that “John Gregory Brown’s compassionate
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vision of human destiny is one that contains both suffering and the possibility of
deliverance...For a book like Decorations in a Ruined Cemetery, the label ‘first novel’ seems
grudging and dismissive. Artistry like this is unclassifiable.” And a reviewer in the British
magazine The New Statesman declared, “Reading it is to rush willingly and excitedly across a
minefield, waiting for blasts of revelation...Brown is a dancing funambulist of a writer.”
Professor Brown’s second novel, The Wrecked, Blessed Body of Shelton Lafleur, recounts the
story of a disabled African-American painter who, as a child during the Depression, was
adopted by a wealthy white family in New Orleans. A Los Angeles Times reviewer declared, “If
William Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor were around to read The Wrecked, Blessed Body of
Shelton Lafleur, they would say that Brown has honored their legacy once again...The beauty of
Brown’s writing never interferes with the truth he is trying to achieve. It only amplifies it...This
novel is John Gregory Brown’s gift of grace to us.” And The London Times asserted, “The
Wrecked, Blessed Body of Shelton Lafleur is a staggering achievement, John Gregory Brown’s
complex portrait of a man painted in prose of stark beauty...Brown is an astonishing writer;
disturbing, odd, but mindful always of the importance of narrative, his ample skills evident in this
curious, heartbreaking -- and deceptively simple -- story of a man broken and bent but not
beaten.”
Audubon’s Watch, Brown’s third novel, was named the Louisiana Endowment for the
Humanities Book of the Year. The novel explores the life and art of the naturalist and painter
John James Audubon through his fictional encounter with a recently widowed anatomist at a
plantation in St. Francisville, Louisiana, where the young Audubon has been employed as a
tutor. Writing in the New York Times Book Review, novelist Stewart O’Nan stated, “Brown's
ambition and achievement in Audubon's Watch lie in the sensual effects of his ornate, overripe
language. Again and again, he pushes his style to the limit, with more than a nod to the stagy
conventions of the day. It's a brazen performance that few authors would have the skill or the
courage to risk.” And in the Los Angeles Times, essayist Sven Birkerts wrote, “Though elegantly
and poetically written, the novel is quick with primal energies and powerfully troubling themes.
We catch the heat of Audubon's sexual passion… and we probe the ancient questions about
betrayal, forgiveness and, centrally, the enigma of time and memory.”
Professor Brown’s most recent novel, published in June, is A Thousand Miles from Nowhere. It
tells the story of a Hurricane Katrina refugee who winds up in central Virginia, where he
encounters further tragedy but also begins to rebuild his life. A New York Times reviewer called
the novel “…a deeply humane look at the vulnerability of black lives, the changing contours of
the New South and the restorative potential of literature in the aftermath of catastrophe” while
Library Journal stated, “Masterfully crafted with descriptive prose buoyed by likable, vividly
drawn supporting characters, this novel is firmly rooted in the transportive storytelling traditions
of the best Southern literature.”
Professor Brown’s editor, Lee Boudreaux of Lee Boudreaux Books, Little Brown & Co., says
about A Thousand Miles from Nowhere:
I was immediately drawn to his beautiful novel because of his stunning use of language—the
precision of his word choice, the prayer-like incantation of his rhythms, the sense of crescendo
as the novel progressed. But I was equally attracted to the psychological insights with which he
delved into his characters’ lives. He seemed, on the page, to have a truly profound
understanding of human flaws and frailty. Consequently, John has an equally profound grasp of
the ways in which small acts of quotidian kindness and bravery counterbalance those forces.
And this emotional intelligence comes through in everything John does. What a joy he was to
work with on his novel! It was such a masterful piece of fiction, it required very little help from
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me. But John is the kind of writer capable of taking the smallest suggestion and using it like a
lever to move the pieces of a novel into perfect alignment.
Integration of Knowledge
Among the most significant challenges in operating any academic program at a small liberal arts
college is creating a sufficient diversity of intellectual experiences for students while maintaining
the benefit of a low faculty-to-student ratio. Many of the changes and innovations to the creative
writing program Professor Brown has made at Sweet Briar have been designed to broaden and
enhance students’ academic and intellectual engagement while also creating opportunities for
sustained work with a single mentor. Rather than operate on the conventional model of
introductory, intermediate, and advanced courses that most college’s creative writing programs
employ, Professor Brown asked his creative writing colleagues at Sweet Briar to create topiccentered courses that would allow students to approach work in multiple genres in a variety of
ways. Thus, the courses that comprise the creative writing offerings at Sweet Briar include such
poetry workshops as Poetry and the Environment, Asian Influences, and
Art/Poem/Collaboration; fiction workshops such as A Sense of Place, First-Person Fiction, The
Love Story, and Linked Stories; and creative nonfiction workshops such as The Art of the
Personal Essay, Landscapes, and Bearing Witness.
Expanding the college’s Writers Series and introducing an International Writers series were
further efforts to diversify the students’ educational opportunities and to offer students – and the
broader college community – a greater sense of the various roles writers assume not just in the
literary world but in the broader culture in which they live and upon which they comment in their
work.
Professor Brown also worked with his junior colleagues in creative writing to expand the reach
of the program, an effort that led to the development of two distinctive programs at Sweet Briar:
•
•
The Sweet Briar College Undergraduate Creative Writing Conference, which each
year brought in students from colleges across Virginia and across the United States
for a four-day gathering of workshops, readings, and lectures.
The Blue Ridge Summer Institute for Young Artists, a multi-disciplinary arts program
for high school students.
Professor Brown was also one of the original proponents and organizers of the college’s
interdisciplinary Bachelor of Fine Arts program, which offers students interested in pursuing
more than one creative field a challenging program of courses leading to a senior project that
integrates their artistic interests and training.
Finally, Professor Brown has worked closely with the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, an
internationally recognized artists’ colony on Sweet Briar property adjacent to main campus, to
create opportunities for Sweet Briar students to meet with writers (and other artists) during their
residencies.
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Service
Professor Brown has a long record of service to the college and to the broader community. At
the college he has served as Chair of the Faculty Executive Committee, the Personnel
Committee, the Faculty Diversity Committee, the Lectures & Events Committee (co-chair), and
the QEP Implementation Committee. He has twice served on the search committee to fill the
Dean and Vice President of Academic Affairs position. As a result of having a daughter with
cerebral palsy, he has taken particular interest in improving accessibility on campus for disabled
students and community members, successfully advocating that the Board of Trustees agree to
complete an accessibility audit of the entire campus.
Professor Stephen Wassell, who served with Professor Brown on the Faculty Executive
Committee, states:
At a college with a strong shared governance tradition such as Sweet Briar, where the faculty
have not only the primary say in academic affairs but also a substantial secondary influence
college-wide, faculty possessing the ability to state a cause eloquently, directly, and
convincingly are crucially important. John Gregory Brown is such a professor. He showed the
ability to work with various constituencies, often with competing interests, in order to arrive at a
consensus; to develop ideas into a plan of action; and to work effectively with both the faculty
and administration to effect positive change.
Since arriving at Sweet Briar, Professor Brown has worked to create a sense of community
among all the college’s employees and has been a passionate advocate on behalf of the staff
(who have no elected representation), voicing their concerns to the administration. There is no
greater example of Professor Brown’s efforts as a community advocate than that evidenced by
the role he played in helping save the college. When the college’s prior administration
announced on March 3, 2015 that it would close Sweet Briar, Professor Brown arranged for the
law firm of White & Case to represent the employees of the college on a pro bono basis, and he
served as the lead plaintiff in the tenured faculty’s suit against the college. He then participated
in the mediation process arranged by the Commonwealth’s Attorney General that led to the
settlement keeping the college open.
Professor Brown’s colleague, Aaron Mahler, SBC’s Chief Technology Officer, says of this time:
John invited me to be the representative for the staff in White & Case’s legal efforts. During
these months, I witnessed John’s tireless work in addressing the concerns and fears of faculty
and staff alike, many of whom communicated with him in secret for fear of retribution by the
administration. In the end, John’s quest for legal guidance for his beloved community helped in
not only preventing the closure of Sweet Briar College, but secured severance for faculty and
staff members who had lost their jobs before a settlement was assured or were forced to sell
their homes and take other work in distant locations.
In the broader community, Professor Brown was a longtime volunteer for the Wintergreen
Adaptive Sports program and served for many years on the board of the local chapter of Habitat
for Humanity, a position to which he will return in October. His most enjoyable service, he has
said, was his decade-long visits to Amherst County elementary school, where he read to his
children’s classes each Friday and shared his love for literature.
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Personal Statement
My teaching – how I teach, what I teach, to whom I teach – has been shaped by Sweet
Briar College, but much more meaningfully, much more profoundly, my life has been shaped by
this school and its mission of educating women. To help young women acquire not merely an
education but a voice, to guide them toward both the capability and confidence to encounter the
world, to speak up, to find language to match their ideas and insights and imaginations – this
has been the guiding principle of my work as an educator these last two decades, but by far the
most dramatic growth has been my own. I have learned, as surely my students have learned in
their history and philosophy and biology classes, that again and again I will have to put aside
what I think I already know in order to learn something new – that students who are learning
disabled can be masterfully gifted writers, that the least confident students can possess a
blazing intelligence, that a student can read for the first time a story I have read three dozen
times and teach me to see it anew.
In a broader culture that would still, in the twenty-first century, seek to silence women, to
objectify them, to encourage passivity, to offer limited opportunities and diminished
compensation for their contributions, I can imagine no worthier educational calling than to offer,
as Sweet Briar College offers, a contradictory message – that our students can be – indeed,
must be – active, ambitious leaders free to pursue their intellectual and artistic ambitions
wherever that may lead them.
If I ever doubted the success of Sweet Briar’s mission, then all doubt was swept away
with the alumnae’s response to the announced closure of the college. Their effort to save the
school they loved required precisely the skills the college had aimed to teach them – ambition,
outspokenness, leadership, organization, clear thinking – as well as a generosity of spirit, a
fierce loyalty, and an abundance of faith in the face of what appeared to be a hopeless effort. I
was honored to become part of that effort, to seek to give a voice to the faculty and staff who
stood to abruptly lose their jobs without a promise of severance and with little time to seek new
employment. My wife and I found teaching positions at Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts
and signed contracts there we felt compelled to honor when the college was saved. As deeply
traumatic as it was to lose our home on campus and to say goodbye to the colleagues and
friends we’d come to know over our two decades at Sweet Briar, we were so very proud of what
the alumnae and employees had accomplished.
We did not imagine that we would ever have the opportunity to return – and certainly not
so quickly, after only a year away. I am grateful beyond measure.
I’ve returned, then, to continue my work at Sweet Briar with a renewed appreciation for
its mission and for my place in helping to fulfill that mission. Every aspect of what I do at Sweet
Briar, I recognize, should be in service to that goal. The meals my wife and I offer students in
our home, the lectures and readings I organize, the excursions to cultural events, the individual
conferences, the written responses to student work, the advising meetings, the classroom
discussions – all of it serves to inform these young women that they are here at this college not
merely to learn but to grow in experience and ambition and confidence, that this is what is being
demanded of them.
Demanding. That’s the one word, I confess, that I hear from students more often than
any other. They usually add that I’m loud or energetic or enthusiastic or a little intimidating, a
little scary, but almost always the word demanding makes its way into my course evaluations.
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And I’m about as proud of that as anything else because, of course, it requires effort to be
demanding; it requires dedication; it requires that you care about your students’ performance,
that you want to push them to do more, to be better.
I’ve tried to be demanding in regard to my own work at Sweet Briar. I’ve taken on
leadership roles and additional responsibilities despite knowing that each would make the job of
being a novelist a little harder. I’ve introduced new programs, developed honors courses,
worked hard on behalf of my colleagues and the college. But I’ve done so with an abiding sense
of how all of that effort, all of that dedication in trying to meet the complicated challenges that
students offer, creates the richness of my life as a professor. That I’ve been a successful
novelist as well, that I have managed to write four books and can now set about writing a fifth,
seems to me a great good fortune, more than I could have ever thought to expect.
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JOHN GREGORY BROWN: Abbreviated Curriculum Vitae
EDUCATION
Johns Hopkins University
Louisiana State University
Tulane University
EMPLOYMENT
Sweet Briar College
Deerfield Academy
Johns Hopkins University
Goucher College
M.A. in the Writing Seminars,1988
M.A. in English,1984 Phi Kappa Phi
B.A. in English,1982 Phi Beta Kappa
1994 – 2015, 2016-present
Director of Creative Writing,
Julia Jackson Nichols Professor of English,
Cameron Fellow
2015-2016, English Teacher
1993 – 1994, Instructor
1993, Visiting Assistant Professor
PUBLICATIONS
Books
A Thousand Miles From Nowhere. Novel. Lee Boudreaux Books. Little, Brown and
Co., 2016.
Audubon’s Watch. Novel. Houghton Mifflin Co., September, 2001.
The Wrecked, Blessed Body of Shelton Lafleur. Novel. Houghton Mifflin Co., April,
1996.
Decorations in a Ruined Cemetery. Novel. Houghton Mifflin Co., January, 1994.
Short Stories and Novel Excerpts
“Audubon’s Watch,” Louisiana Cultural Vistas. New Orleans, LA. Winter 2001-2002.
“Laps,” Shenandoah. Spring, 1998.
“The Great Sea,” Louisiana Cultural Vistas. New Orleans, LA. Spring, 1996.
“The Fallen Bridge,” Louisiana Cultural Vistas. New Orleans, LA. Fall, 1994.
“This Summer,” The Sun. Durham, NC. July, 1993.
“The Mower,” Village Advocate. Chapel Hill, NC. June 23, 1985.
Selected Book Reviews (through 2004)
“Characters With Happiness Just Beyond Reach,” Boston Globe, March 14, 2010,
Review of Richard Bausch’s Something Is Out There: Stories.
“The Collision Between Body and Soul, Artfully Told,” Boston Globe, January 3, 2010.
Review of Jim Harrison’s The Farmer’s Daughter.
“A Life Salvaged, Offering Few Lessons,” Boston Globe, September 13, 2009. Review
of Cheeni Rao’s In Hanuman’s Hands.
“Dark, Dreamlike Tales,” Boston Globe, August 2, 2009. Review of Aleksandar Hemon’s
Love and Obstacles.
“Alternative Living,” Washington Post, January 4, 2009. Review of Carolyn Chute’s The
School on Heart’s Content Road.
“Lodge Looks Soberly at Death’s ‘Long Silence,’” Boston Globe, October 19, 2008.
Review of David Lodge’s Deaf Sentence.
“In ‘Man’ Auster Conjures Crises Real and Fantastic,” Boston Globe. August 24, 2008.
Review of Paul Auster’s Man in the Dark.
“Out of Place,” Boston Globe. April 6, 2008. Review of Jhumpa Lahiri’s Unaccustomed
Earth.
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“Audubon’s Excellent Adventures,” Boston Globe. November 28, 2004. Review of
Richard Rhodes’ John James Audubon: The Making of An American.
“Bird Man of America,” Chicago Tribune, May 30, 2004. Review of William Souder’s
Under a Wild Sky: John James Audubon and the Making of “The Birds of America” and
Duff Hart-Davis’s Audubon’s Elephant: America’s Greatest Naturalist and the Making of
“The Birds of America”.
“Slavery and Survival,” Chicago Tribune, January 18, 2004. Review of Edward P.
Jones’s The Known World.
Non-Fiction
“Losing My New Orleans,” Essay on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition. September
5, 2005.
“Other Bodies, Ourselves: The Mask of Fiction,” Essay in Creating Fiction, Story Press,
1999. Edited by Julie Checkoway.
“Master of Contradiction,” Chicago Tribune, Sunday, October 25, 1998. Essay on
Portugese Nobel Laureate José Saramago.
“In the art of fiction, it’s a challenge to make reality ring true,” The Boston Globe, July 13,
1997. Essay on biographical fiction.
Numerous news and feature articles, essays, book reviews, and columns in the
Columbia Flier, the Howard County Times, the Laurel Leader, the Raleigh News &
Observer, Southern Changes, Spectator Magazine.
AWARDS
Cameron Fellow, Sweet Briar College, 2010-present. [Awarded to a distinguished
faculty member to reward excellence in teaching, scholarship and service.]
Louisiana Endowment for The Humanities Book of the Year for Audubon’s Watch,
2002.
George A. and Eliza Gardner Howard Foundation Fellowship, 1998-1999.
John Steinbeck Award for Decorations in a Ruined Cemetery, 1996, U.K. [Awarded for
the best novel of the year published in the United Kingdom by a writer under forty.]
Regional Winner—Granta magazine Best Young American Novelists competition,
1996.
The Lillian Smith Book Award for Decorations in a Ruined Cemetery, 1994. [Awarded
by the Southern Regional Council for the year’s best work of fiction about the South.]
Lyndhurst Prize, 1993. Three-year fellowship from The Lyndhurst Foundation.
Selected PROFESSIONAL SERVICE
Sweet Briar College
Chair, Faculty Executive Committee (FEC) (2013-2014)
Member, FEC (2012-2013) (Note: the FEC was formerly known as the Faculty Senate)
Chair, Quality Enhancement Program (QEP) Implementation Committee (2009-2011)
Housing Committee (1998-2000, 2003-2004, 2010-2012)
Dean Search Committee (2003-2004, 2010-2011)
Chair, Faculty Diversity Committee (2009- 2010)
Faculty Senate (1998-2000) (2003-2004) (2008- 2010)
Co-chair, Faculty Working Group on Diversity (2007-2008)
Initiated, planned, and implemented the International Writers Series 1999-2000, 20032004, and 2008-2009
Service to Community
Board of Directors, Amherst County Habitat for Humanity (2010 - 2015)
Volunteer, Wintergreen Adaptive Sports (2008 - 2013)
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Letters of Support (Excerpted)
Soon after arriving as Sweet Briar’s new president, in the traumatic aftermath of the attempted
closing of the school, I had the privilege of meeting Professor John Gregory Brown. Having read
in media accounts that he had asserted a leadership role in the efforts to keep the college open,
I was disappointed to learn that, in light of the planned closing, he and his wife had accepted
positions out of state and felt honor-bound to fulfill their commitment even when they learned
Sweet Briar would remain open. I thoroughly enjoyed my conversations with Professor Brown
before he left the campus. He had such a passion for the school and its students. In the months
following his departure, as we tried to re-size the faculty for a much smaller enrollment resulting
from the closing effort, faculty and students urged me to bring him back to campus. At
considerable cost and inconvenience to himself and his family, he agreed to come back. His
return has been met with universal acclaim. He is clearly seen as an exceptional teacher, a
leader of the faculty, one who cherishes liberal arts education and sees his role as mentoring
and teaching students for the fullness of life, not just their intellectual development.
—Phillip C. Stone, President of Sweet Briar College (SBC)
Since becoming the Director of the Creative Writing Program, John Gregory Brown has exerted
a powerful and positive influence on the College. He has lifted the profile and quality of our
Creative Writing Program by introducing curricular innovations such as topic-centered courses,
hiring top-flight authors as program faculty, broadening the scope of the Writer’s Series, and
founding the International Writer’s Series in order to expose our students and indeed, the entire
College and regional community, to famed writers from across the globe. He has helped build
lasting interdisciplinary connections between his own and other arts and humanities
departments on campus, as well as with other arts organizations in the region. He is a trusted
leader who rallied his fellow employees to help save the College when it was threatened. To
paraphrase another great American writer: John Gregory is large; he contains multitudes.
Renowned award-winning author, excellent teacher and mentor, determined colleague of
unquestioned integrity, committed community builder—Professor Brown is all this, and more.
—Pamela J. DeWeese, Dean and Vice President for Academic Affairs, SBC
John is uniquely responsible for the success of the college's creative writing program, having
directed it, overseen the design of its curriculum, and endorsed its most noteworthy new
initiatives. He founded the International Writers' Series, which brought global authors to
campus, connecting them with our students and colleagues in meaningful and substantive
ways. This series alone made our students' college experiences more cosmopolitan, better
informed, and less culturally isolated than they could possibly have been otherwise at Sweet
Briar. John also made possible the Creative Writing Conference, which brought national
attention to the college with an annual gathering of top undergraduate students in fiction, poetry,
and essay and made a remarkable difference in the education of our students and the collegial
experience of those who taught at or visited the conference. John's work as a colleague and
classroom teacher speaks for itself. He has always had an ambition for his students that
outstripped their own ambition for themselves, just as he wanted the program to do and be more
than it needed to be. From 2007 through 2015, we saw increasing numbers of students seek out
Sweet Briar specifically because of our program, and likewise saw increasing focus on
extracurricular literary culture, graduate education, and higher standards for student work. The
program made a difference in the lives of its students as a direct result of his vision and work.
—John Casteen, Poet and essayist, Associate Professor of Poetry at SBC, 2007-2015
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John Gregory Brown demonstrates outstanding work as a writer and teacher of writing. Our
association is in the context of UVA’s Young Writers Workshop (YWW), where he became
instrumental in the program’s summer home relocation at Sweet Briar when its future was in
jeopardy. He has since invested his time each summer, bringing his zeal for writing and his zest
for teaching to the program’s student community and staff of teaching writers, and helped
secure the future of this nationally recognized program with a 5000+ alumni base. Young
writers coming from all over the United States and globe experience early mentorship in creative
writing because of John’s relentless efforts to wed Sweet Briar’s mission and facilities with the
program’s aesthetics. He also facilitated three annual year-long YWW/SBC Fellowships for
teaching writers. John Gregory owns a distinguished track record as a fiction writer, mentor of
writers, and invested colleague, advancing the interests of all constituents of the literary arts.
—Margo A. Figgins, Faculty Emerita, English Education, The UVA Curry School; Founding
Director, UVA Young Writers Workshop
I worked at Sweet Briar as a visiting professor and served as the Artistic Director for the
college’s resident theatre company, the Endstation Theatre Company. Throughout that entire
time, John was a force, a change leader, and a vital member of the community. He was and is a
champion for the arts and their role in liberal arts education. He sees them as a tool for the
college’s future growth. When I was producing theatre on the campus, John looked for
collaborative opportunities to engage our work in promoting the college, supporting and
interacting with summer programs at the college, and he was a continual champion for our new
play projects. His own prowess as an author is also an incredible example to the students, the
community, and the institution. He has proven that the arts are a viable and enriching vocation.
The Sweet Briar student body is so fortunate to have him as role model and inspiration.
—Geoffrey Kershner, Executive Director, Academy Center of the Arts, Lynchburg VA
John Gregory Brown has the most forceful personality of any teacher I have known. Yet, his gift
as a teacher is to see each individual student’s need and help that student rise to the next level
using whatever means he can. One day with one student, John will be a warm and nurturing
parent figure. Another day, a candid critic. Another day, a magical storyteller. Another day, a
patiently listening therapist. And each “version” of John is as authentic and genuine and truly as
caring as the last. He brings this commitment to his colleagues and community as well. He has
hosted more events at his home than most other Sweet Briar professors put together. Through
receptions for students to meet famous writers, parties for majors and minors, or quiet evenings
for colleagues to discuss the pedagogical issues of the day, John’s home—no less than his
classroom—is a space of growth and learning. Finally, John is a leader not just at Sweet Briar,
but for Sweet Briar. He organized the faculty response to the College’s near closure in 2015,
which in conjunction with additional lawsuits and the fundraising of generous donors, saved our
college and our community. He teaches, therefore, not only how to craft stories, but how to craft
our lives. He teaches us all to find what matters and to give it our energy, our time, our treasure,
and our hearts.
—Tony Lilly, Associate Professor of English, SBC
You have to get to know John Gregory Brown, but once you do, you find out he’s very
knowledgeable in everything he does. He is a really good man. He’s great to work with; he’s a
guy that you can rely on all the time. He understands work. He listens. He’s trustworthy. He
talks to people. He and his wife, Carrie, invite folks to their house and really build a sense of
community. He was a huge help to his fellow campus home owners after the closure
announcement. I wasn’t going to give up my home. I wanted to fight. John kept us all informed
and held informational meetings at the college library for homeowners. We all worked together
and pulled together, but it was John who really helped us.
—Richard Canode, Lead Groundskeeper, Physical Plant, SBC
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"Art from the Ashes" was a freshman course taught by John Gregory Brown in the Spring of my
senior year at Sweet Briar. It was a bittersweet course by nature, focusing on the art -- written,
auditory, and visual -- that emerged in the aftermath of 9/11. When JGB offered me the chance
to be a teaching assistant for his course, I seized the opportunity that has so subtly -- yet
significantly -- impacted the course of my post-graduate career as an educator. In that course,
JGB encouraged both his students and myself to extend our thoughts, our writings, and, in
effect, ourselves to become more developed. He taught us, through example, the value of
reaching further, probing the depths of our thoughts, and exploring those of our peers. He
modeled not only the processes used by effective artists, but also the principles followed by
successful teachers: expect a lot from your students, open their eyes to the world, and never
settle for anything less than their full potential. Such truths, in their simplicity, are unforgettable
and invaluable. We may struggle, whether as a teacher or as an artist or in any role in between,
but from the ashes, art emerges. As a teacher, JGB’s example reminds me to challenge my
students to become more than they thought possible because the reward compensates for the
struggle. And, as a human being, he taught me to always take in the world, to search constantly
for connections, and to never, ever stop learning. —Maria El-Abd, SBC, BA 2012, MAT 2013;
Teacher, Linkhorne Middle School, Lynchburg; Ph.D. student in gifted education, UVA
John Gregory Brown has that gift that only the best teachers have – to connect with his students
at a depth that changes their relationship to the world. He pushes his students to be not just
better writers but better readers, more attuned human beings. As I prepared to graduate from
Sweet Briar, I remember sitting in his office feeling afraid of the future. I expressed my doubts
and insecurities to him, like I always did, and he proceeded to change my life with ten words:
“You decide how big you want your world to be.” Even in the moment, I knew those words were
true, though they had not occurred to me before, and I also knew they would stay with me
forever. I was right – that was seventeen years ago. In the intervening years, I have come to
think of John Gregory Brown not just as a mentor but as a friend. Last year I began a three-year
MFA program, and he has supported me at every turn of that journey. His commitment to his
students does not stop when they leave his classroom. There is absolutely no one more
deserving of recognition as a teacher.
—Heather McLeod, SBC Class of 1999; MFA candidate in poetry, Texas State University
Without a doubt, John Gregory Brown has been the most influential educator I’ve had in my life.
Until I took his class my freshman year at Sweet Briar, it never occurred to me that I might be
able to make a career out of writing; I always assumed my creativity would have to be only a
hobby. Thankfully, John noticed my passion for writing and literature, and instinctively knew how
to channel that into the right path for me, which included preparing me (both mentally and
scholastically) for graduate school. He could tell I loved writing and had a way with words, and
he made sure I had every opportunity to pursue that. Today, I’m in charge of social media for
four different companies and my job allows me chances to write and be creative on a daily
basis. I love being known as our go-to grammar wonk and the wordsmith; I love being the
person who crafts the story of a brand or product or opportunity. John always found new ways
to tap into our creative passions and push us a little harder each time to refine our work. I have
a story inside, one I’m waiting to tell, and if it weren’t for John, I would never have known how to
begin telling it; I simply wouldn’t have had the words.
—Jennifer Crutcher Frye, SBC Class of 1999; Social Media & Content Manager, AERUS LLC.
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Additional Documentation
Comments from Professor Brown’s student course evaluations for a selection of classes
ENGL 104 (Thought and Expression)
● Overall, this course was challenging. However, I learned a lot and I noticed how the
instructor took time and cared about students being able to understand the materials.
This course has absolutely opened by eyes by exposing me to fiction stories from all
over the world.
● I have learned to write in my own voice, and deeply think about literature. The
instructor had high expectations. He wants students to succeed and broaden their
thoughts about literature and writing. Great class!
● This class was very challenging and inspired higher-end thinking. My writing
drastically improved & I enjoyed the depth of all of the stories. By being forced to think
beyond their basic meanings, I was able to better comprehend stories, which allowed me
to write better as well. He pushes students so that they can become more advanced and
strive to push themselves when he’s not around.
ENGL 106 (Introduction to Creative Writing)
● This course has made me write and read more than any other class ever has. I feel that my
writing skills really improved. I felt the instructor had a great attitude toward all the students.
● This course uses practice and I love the fact that we were doing not watching. It has shown
me that I can write and has helped me to understand why some works of fiction or poetry are
great and others not. Professor Brown is intense but very interested and encouraging.
● I loved this class. I have a greater appreciate for creative writing and the effort it takes to
create something good. He is extremely supportive and enthusiastic about our work.
● This class has enabled me to think more critically about my own writing, pay attention to
detail, and work harder. He is helpful and encouraging with a humor that keeps the class fun
and interesting.
ENGL 201 (Fiction Workshop)
● I love the way we discuss things all the time, and not just with the professor, but among
ourselves as well. We did a lot of reading which took up a lot of time, but I think that what we
read helped us expand our literary thoughts. This course has helped me reach a new level of
reading, critiquing, writing, and discussing stories and novels. Professor Brown is very loud,
sometimes overbearing and even a bit scary, but at the same time, kind, helpful, witty, funny,
and engaging. He is probably one of my favorite teachers I’ve ever had.
● I enjoy workshop with J. Brown. He always gives great criticism. JGB is a great instructor. He
has a lot of passion and I appreciate that because I know I am getting the feedback I need to be
a better writer.
● This course has helped me see what makes a story successful, and has influenced me to
apply what I’ve learned to my pleasure reading. This course has definitely deepened my
understanding of writing and of books. JGB is very passionate about things. He will always give
his honest opinion, no sugar coating, which I think is necessary for this class.
ENGL 312 (Advanced Fiction Workshop)
● This class has further developed the ways in which I can express myself in writing. JGB does
a good job of pushing us toward new ground and new ideas so that we have to improve.
● This course had no weaknesses for me. The instructor and the material covered were very
helpful to my understanding of fiction. This course has increased my understanding of how to
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write fiction and also how to critique other fiction. The instructor was always helpful and
prepared for class.
● Loved the critiques—it’s really helpful to be able to hear what everyone thinks of the stories,
and to have parts batted back & forth, instead of just getting written critiques. (Those are good,
too, but the class discussions are the best.) This course has been very helpful in that it’s made
clear what elements of my writing I need to work on! JGB is engaging, funny, very helpful—
creates a great atmosphere to critique and be critiqued in.
● John is always upbeat and full of enthusiasm. He instructs and corrects in a manner which
encourages his students. This has indeed given me confidence in my abilities as an aspiring
writer.
Lee Boudreaux, Editor, Lee Boudreaux Books of Little, Brown & Co., and the editor of Professor
Brown’s latest novel, A Thousand Miles from Nowhere, says of his teaching ability:
“Many authors teach as a way to earn a living. But for John, teaching is his way of learning and
being in the world.”
REVIEWS of Professor Brown’s novels have appeared in the following publications:
New York Times, New York Times Book Review, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times,
Washington Post, Washington Times, Detroit Free Press, Boston Globe, The London
Times, The Daily Telegraph, New Statesman and Society, Newsday, New York
Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, Southern Living, The Times Literary Supplement,
Baltimore Sun, San Francisco Chronicle, Houston Post, New Orleans Times-Picayune,
Charlotte Observer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Richmond Times-Dispatch, Virginian
Pilot and Ledger-Star, Dallas Morning News, Orlando Sentinel, Memphis Commercial
Appeal, Roanoke Times & World News, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Toledo Blade,
Jackson Clarion-Ledger, Austin American-Statesman, Asheville Citizen-Times,
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Albany Times-Union, Greensboro News & Record, Santa
Fe New Mexican, St. Petersburg Times, Cincinnati Enquirer, Dayton Daily News,
Hartford Courant, Seattle Times, Publishers Weekly, Booklist, Library Journal, Kirkus
Reviews, The Hudson Review, The Southern Review, Tulanian, The Southern Quarterly.
Book Review Excerpts
A Thousand Miles from Nowhere
“…a deeply humane look at the vulnerability of black lives, the changing
contours of the New South and the restorative potential of literature in
the aftermath of catastrophe.”
—New York Times Book Review
“…a tale of redemption that is both believably prosaic and incredibly,
quietly moving…Brown has a deft way of writing about loss and
redemption, at once physical and immediate. The result is palpable, and
the relief as Henry once more finds his narrative–the thread that holds
his story together–is profound.” — Boston Globe
“A book of profound grace and consolation.”
—New Orleans Advocate
“…full of quirky characters, incidents, and unexpected events—all of them eventually
pointing in the direction of homecoming, the power of literature, the possibility of
17
redemption. Brown pulls on classic literature of the past, especially archetypal patterns
of the hero’s return, creating a work of great maturity.” —Counter Punch
Audubon’s Watch
“Brown's ambition and achievement … lie in the sensual effects of his
ornate, overripe language. Again and again, he pushes his style to the
limit, with more than a nod to the stagy conventions of the day. It's a
brazen performance that few authors would have the skill or the
courage to risk.”
—New York Times Book Review
“It is a rare sensation to encounter an American novel so concerned with
the beauty of language and focused on the moral topography of love;
these concerns give Audubon’s Watch its fundamental strength.”—Chicago Tribune
“Pain brings with it truth, and true appreciation for living. There are few light moments in
these pages, but its meaningfulness provides striking images and quiet lessons. John
Gregory Brown unfurls the subtle details of two lives with great delicacy and skill.”
—New Orleans Times-Picayune
The Wrecked, Blessed Body of Shelton Lafleur
“…a staggering achievement, John Gregory Brown’s complex portrait of
a man painted in prose of stark beauty...Brown is an astonishing writer;
disturbing, odd, but mindful always of the importance of narrative, his
ample skills evident in this curious, heartbreaking -- and deceptively
simple -- story of a man broken and bent but not beaten.”
—The (London) Times
It’s impossible to come away from this novel with anything but
admiration for the author -- especially his imaginative command of language and
narrative voice.”
—Chicago Tribune
“If William Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor were around to read The Wrecked, Blessed
Body of Shelton Lafleur, they would say that Brown has honored their legacy once
again...The beauty of Brown’s writing never interferes with the truth he is trying to
achieve. It only amplifies it...This novel is John Gregory Brown’s gift of grace to us.”
—Los Angeles Times
Decorations in a Ruined Cemetery
“John Gregory Brown’s compassionate vision of human destiny is one
that contains both suffering and the possibility of deliverance...For a book
like Decorations in a Ruined Cemetery, the label ‘first novel’ seems
grudging and dismissive. Artistry like this is unclassifiable.”
—New York Times Book Review
“I wish more people today would attempt books like this one, novels that
take on the big questions, the eternal verities, and, without pretense and a whole lot of
claptrap, address the difficulty of finding meaning and significance in life. For this is the
stuff of which classics are made and what literature, certainly, is all about.”
—Los Angeles Times
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“…a sensitive, graceful piece of writing with an emotional candor about it that speaks
well for John Gregory Brown’s future life as a writer.” —Boston Globe
READINGS—Professor Brown has held readings of his novels at the following
places: Colgate University, Washington and Lee University, University of Georgia, The
American University, Tulane University, Loyola University, McNeese State University,
Johns Hopkins University, North Carolina State University, Hollins University, The Seven
Hills School (Cincinnati, Ohio), Howard County (Maryland) Poetry and Literature Society,
Sweet Briar College, J. Sergeant Reynolds Community College, Tennessee
Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival, Vero Beach (Florida) Center for the Arts,
University of Richmond, Eudora Welty Festival (Jackson, Mississippi), Columbia Festival
of the Arts, Virginia Festival of the Book, Music and Words Conference (New Orleans,
Louisiana), Baltimore Writers Alliance Conference, Writers at Work Conference (Salt
Lake City, Utah), Sewanee Writers Conference, and readings throughout the United
States while on book tour.
Scholarly Articles about Professor Brown’s Work
“A single woman…among so many men”: Negotiating Gendered Spaces in John
Gregory Brown’s Audubon’s Watch.” Journal of American Studies. 47 (2013), 3, 605619. Cambridge University Press. ABSTRACT: This paper examines the notion of
gendered space in Audubon’s Watch…. Focusing on Myra Richardson Gautreaux –
perhaps Brown’s most intriguing female protagonist – it explores, firstly, how Myra
continuously employs “forbidden” language in order to problematize subjects like
physical intimacy and sexual desire and, secondly, how her linguistic experimentation,
combined with her solitary walks through the dark streets of nineteenth century New
Orleans, disrupt the dichotomy of public versus private. … Ultimately, the following paper
shows that Audubon’s Watch should be read not only as an interesting hybrid of
southern gothic and fictional biography, but also as a multi-layered work that attempts to
redefine the gendered spaces of language, science, and art.
“Embodying and Transgressing Race in the Novels of John Gregory Brown,” by
Artemis Michaelidou. Journal of American Studies, 40 (2006), 3, 573–592. Cambridge
University Press. ABSTRACT: This essay discusses corporeal and racial representation
in the work of John Gregory Brown. Placing the discussion within the rich literary
tradition of the American South, the author focuses on the male protagonists of his first
two novels – Decorations in a Ruined Cemetery (1994) and The Wrecked, Blessed Body
of Shelton Lafleur (1996) – and examines why Brown’s characters constantly shift
between different racial positions, and how notions such as racial purity or fixed
subjectivity are exposed and interrogated. … The author’s conclusion maintains that
both novels offer new insights into the interaction between corporeal representation and
racial identity, which make an important contribution to the tradition of American and,
particularly, Southern literature.
Race Mixing: Southern Fiction Since the Sixties by Suzanne Whitmore Jones.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004. Pp. 18, 68, 211, 220-229, 242, 280.
Relevant pages discuss the novel Decorations in A Ruined Cemetery in the context of
the author’s examination of race in contemporary Southern novels.
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