Jim Grimsley
Jim Grimsley | |
---|---|
Born | Grifton, North Carolina, U.S. | September 21, 1955
Occupation | Novelist, playwright |
Nationality | American |
Website | |
literati |
Jim Grimsley (born September 21, 1955) is an American novelist and playwright.
Biography
Born to a rural family in Grifton, North Carolina,[1] Grimsley said of his childhood that "for us in the South, the family is a field where craziness grows like weeds".[2]
After moving to Atlanta, he would spend nearly twenty years as a secretary at Atlanta's Grady Memorial Hospital before joining the creative-writing faculty at Emory University. During those years, Grimsley wrote prolifically, with fourteen of his plays produced between 1983 and 1993.
Writing
His initial forays into novel writing were less successful than his dramatic work. The semiautobiographical Winter Birds was rejected as "too dark" by American publishers for ten years before appearing in a German edition; it only appeared in English sometime two years later. The novel then brought Grimsley much recognition: the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a PEN/Hemingway Award citation.
It was followed by
He was awarded the
In 2015, Grimlsey published a memoir entitled How I Shed My Skin: Unlearning the Racist Lessons of a Southern Childhood.[4]
He has also worked on module for the Neverwinter Nights video game called Citadel that won a golden dragon award for best module and a Hall of Fame Award.
References
- )
- ISBN 1566398142. Retrieved February 17, 2017.
- ^ "Saints and Sinners Literary Festival" Archived March 3, 2016, at the Wayback Machine. bestofneworleans.com, May 8, 2007.
- ^ Kenan, Randall (June 5, 2015). "'How I Shed My Skin,' by Jim Grimsley". The New York Times.
Sources
- Grimsley, Jim, Out of Silence, Brightleaf: A Southern Review of Books, 3, March/April 1998
- Grimsley, Jim, Who We Are, Publishers Weekly, September 30, 1996, pp 46–47
- Howorth, Lisa. Jim Grimsley: Tales of Southern Courage, Publishers Weekly, November 5, 1999, pp. 39–40