Allan Gurganus

Infobox Writer


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name = Allan Gurganus
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birthdate = Birth date and age|1947|6|11
birthplace = Rocky Mount, North Carolina
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occupation = Novelist
nationality = American
period = 1989-present
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Allan Gurganus is an American novelist, short story writer, and essayist whose work is often influenced by and set in his native North Carolina. His writing has been compared to the work of William Faulkner and Eudora Welty, who also were identified with the American South.

He was born in Rocky Mount, North Carolina. He first trained as a painter, studying at the University of Pennsylvania and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. He served three years with the United States Navy during the Vietnam War and began writing during this time. He graduated from Sarah Lawrence College where he studied with Grace Paley. He studied with John Cheever and Stanley Elkin at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. In addition to later teaching at both Sarah Lawrence and the Iowa Writers' Workshop, he also taught at Stanford and Duke Universities.

His best known work is his 1989 debut novel, "Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All", which was on the New York Times Best Seller list for eight months. It won the Sue Kaufman Prize from The American Academy of Arts and Letters, was a main selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club, and sold over four million copies. It was made into a CBS television play, with Cicely Tyson winning one of its four Emmy Awards as best supporting actress in the role of the freed slave Castalia. The novel was also adapted for a one-woman Broadway play, starring Ellen Burstyn, in 2003.

Gurganus's other works include "White People", a collection of short stories and novellas; "Plays Well With Others", a novel; and "The Practical Heart", a collection of four novellas, which won a 2001 Lambda Literary Award in the Gay Men's Fiction category. His shorter fiction has been published in "The New Yorker", "The Atlantic Monthly", and "The Paris Review", in addition to being included in the "O. Henry Prize Collection" and the "Norton Anthology of Short Fiction".

After living in New York City for a number of years, Gurganus returned to North Carolina, where he co-founded the political group Writers Against Jesse Helms and, as a result, appeared as himself in Tim Kirkman's 1998 documentary "Dear Jesse". Gurganus has also taken a position against the Iraq War, most notably by citing his Vietnam War experience in a New York Times Magazine essay, "The War at Home" [http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/06/magazine/06WAR.html] [http://www.allangurganus.com/essay.php?doc=essay3&title=New+York+Times+Magazine] , published April 6, 2003, a few weeks after the invasion. Gurganus was also the inaugural guest editor of "New Stories From the South", an annual collection of notable fiction by Southern writers published by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, in 2006. [http://www.algonquin.com/products/9781565125315/]

Works

* "Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All" (1984)
* "White People" (1991)
* "The Practical Heart" (1993 [limited edition] , 2001 [trade edition] )
* "Plays Well With Others" (1997)

External links

* [http://www.allangurganus.com/ Allan Gurganus's website]
*WiredForBooks|americanbookawards86/allangurganus|1989 Real Audio interview with Allan Gurganus|by Don Swaim