Cynthia Shearer
{{Short description|American academic and novelist}}{{Infobox person
| name = Cynthia Shearer
| image = 2017-Endeavors-SHEARER17 standing 1 CC.jpg
| alt = Author Cynthia Shearer smiling at the Camera
| caption = Cynthia Shearer photographed by Carolyn Cruz
| birth_name =
| birth_date = {{Birth year and age|1955|6}}
| birth_place = Chicopee, Massachusetts
| occupation = Author & adjunct professor of English at Texas Christian University & former curator of William Faulkner's Oxford home, Rowan Oak
| years_active = 1994–present
| spouse =Daniel Williams
| known_for =
| notable_works = Two Fictional Novels,The Wonder Book of the Air and The Celestial Jukebox
}}
Cynthia Shearer is an American novelist known for The Wonder Book of the Air and The Celestial Jukebox, southern literatures inspired from personal experiences growing up in Georgia and Mississippi. Shearer is a former curator for William Faulkner's Oxford home, Rowan Oak and retiree from Texas Christian University, where she now teaches as an adjunct faculty for the English Department.{{cite web |last=Hall |first=Joan Wylie |date=July 11, 2017 |title=Cynthia Shearer|url=https://mississippiencyclopedia.org/entries/cynthia-shearer/ |website=Mississippi Encyclopedia |location= |publisher=Center for Study of Southern Culture |access-date=April 23, 2025}}
Early life and education
Cynthia Shearer was born on June 25, 1955, in Westover Air Force Base in Chicopee, Massachusetts. Less than a month after her birth, her family moved to Alapaha, Georgia, her parents' hometown. She describes Alapaha as a "small town where everyone knew everyone else's family tree, and life was simple."{{cite web|url=https://georgiawritershalloffame.org/honorees/cynthia-shearer|title=Cynthia Shearer |website=Georgia Writers Hall of Fame |publisher=Georgia Writers Hall of Fame University of Georgia|access-date=April 27, 2025}} Not long after their arrival to Alapaha did her parents divorced. Shearer remained with her mother, Marjorie E. Shearer, an English teacher through her high school years. In a 1997 interview, Shearer said that she "read more than anyone around [her], and . . . kept a journal every day."{{cite web |last1=Blocker |first1=Tamra |date=1997 |title=Interview with Cynthia Shearer1997|url=https://www.mswritersandmusicians.com/mississippi-writers/cynthia-shearer#:~:text=Cynthia%20Shearer%3A%20A%20Biography&text=Cynthia%20Shearer%20was%20born%20on,a%20high%20school%20English%20teacher. |website= |location= |publisher= |access-date=April 16, 2025}} In college, she pursued writing professionally and credits her college professor, Barry Hannah, for encouraging her to pursue writing.
In the 1970s, Cynthia Shearer enrolled at Valdosta State College (now known as Valdosta State University). After earning her bachelor's degree in 1977, Cynthia Shearer moved to Oxford, Mississippi to pursue a master's degree in English from the University of Mississippi and graduated in 1979. It was in graduate school where she would meet her second husband, Daniel Williams (Dan, as she refers to him), at the time, an international professor from Germany.{{cite web |last1=Herring |first1=Kathryn |date=1997 |title=Cynthia Shearer: A Biography|url=https://www.mswritersandmusicians.com/mississippi-writers/cynthia-shearer#:~:text=Cynthia%20Shearer%3A%20A%20Biography&text=Cynthia%20Shearer%20was%20born%20on,a%20high%20school%20English%20teacher. |website= |location= |publisher= |access-date=April 16, 2025}}
Published works and recognition
Shearer is known for authoring two works of fiction: The Wonder Book of the Air{{cite book |last=Shearer |first=Cynthia |date=1996 |title=The Wonder Book of the Air |url=https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Wonder_Book_of_the_Air.html?id=FERbAAAAMAAJ |location= |publisher=Pantheon Books |page=305 |isbn=9780679439820 |access-date=}} and The Celestial Jukebox{{cite book |last=Shearer |first=Cynthia |date=2005 |title=The Celestial Jukebox |url=https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Celestial_Jukebox.html?id=NW0hzgEACAAJ |location= |publisher=Shoemaker & Hoard |page=431 |isbn=9781593760526 |access-date=}} Her first piece, The Wonder Book of the Air, won a 1996 prize from the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters. Her work has appeared in several publications like Tri-Quarterly, the Missouri Review, and the Oxford American. Shearer was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Fiction in 2000. Several of Shearer's short fiction, After O'Connor: Stories from Contemporary Georgia (2003) and The Oxford American Book of Great Music Writing (2008) work were selected in various anthologies.{{cite web|url=https://georgiawritershalloffame.org/honorees/cynthia-shearer|title=Cynthia Shearer |website=Georgia Writers Hall of Fame |publisher=Georgia Writers Hall of Fame University of Georgia|access-date=April 27, 2025}} In a journal article, the author references Shearer's second novel, The Celestial Jukebox, by citing the representation of the historic and social differences that are found in one of the several background groups found in her book, Chinese immigrants through the character, Angus Chien, the Chinese grocer.{{cite journal |title=How to Be Chinese in Mississippi: Representation of a Chinese Grocer in Cynthia Shearer’s The Celestial Jukebox |author=Neil Segars
|journal= The Global South
|year=2009
|volume=3
|pages=50–63
|url=https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:144961166}}
Shearer is known for curating Rowan Oak, William Faulkner's home in Oxford, Mississippi, for six years.{{cite web |last=Hall |first=Joan Wylie |date=July 11, 2017 |title=Cynthia Shearer|url=https://mississippiencyclopedia.org/entries/cynthia-shearer/ |website=Mississippi Encyclopedia |location= |publisher=Center for Study of Southern Culture |access-date=April 23, 2025}} Shearer was inducted in 2018 to Georgia Writers Hall of Fame. The University of Georgia Libraries established the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame in 2000 to honor Georgia writers and expand Georgia literature and cultural history research.Writer, S (2018) 'Alapaha native to join Georgia Writers Hall of Fame', [https://infoweb.newsbank.com/apps/news/document-view?p=AMNP&docref=news/169B2DA9CC32E8D8#copy Thomasville Times-Enterprise] (GA), 25 Jan, (online NewsBank). {{registration required}} She now teaches as an adjunct faculty for the English Department at Texas Christian University.{{cite web|author= |date= |title=Cynthia Shearer |url=https://addran.tcu.edu/view/cynthia-shearer|website= |location= Fort Worth, TX |publisher= Texas Christian University |access-date= April 23, 2025 }} She retired from Texas Christian University's Center for Writing as an Assistant Director but continues to teach as an adjunct professor. She still lives in Fort Worth, Texas, with her husband, Dan, with whom she had a daughter in 1987.
References
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Category:American women novelists
Category:Writers from Chicopee, Massachusetts
Category:Writers from Georgia (U.S. state)
Category:Valdosta State University alumni