Mary Ward Brown
{{short description|American short story writer and memoirist}}
{{more citations needed|date=May 2015}}
{{Infobox writer
| name = Mary Ward Brown
| image = Mary Ward Brown Reading (3457302326).jpg
| image_size = 250px
| caption = Mary Ward Brown signing one of her books
| birth_name = Mary Ward
| birth_date = {{Birth date|mf=yes|1917|6|18}}
| birth_place = Hamburg, Alabama
| death_date = {{Death date and age|mf=yes|2013|5|14|1917|6|18}}
| death_place =
| occupation = Short story writer, memoirist
| movement =
| signature =
}}
Mary Ward Brown (June 18, 1917 – May 14, 2013) was an American short story writer and memoirist. Her works largely feature Alabama as a setting and have received several awards.
Early life
Brown was born on June 18, 1917, in Hamburg, Alabama. She graduated from Judson College.{{cite web |last1=Dickson |first1=Foster |title=Mary Ward Brown |url=http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/h-1615 |website=Encyclopedia of Alabama |publisher=Alabama Humanities Foundation |accessdate=May 25, 2015 |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20150525225759/http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/h-1615 |archivedate=May 25, 2015 |url-status=live |date=May 20, 2013 }} She had two half-brothers; one was Sheldon Fitts, who played college football for the Georgia Bulldogs football team.{{Cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=23z_ygH_twIC&pg=PA3 |title = Fanning the Spark: A Memoir |isbn = 9780817316457 |last = Brown |first = Mary Ward |page=3 |date = 2009 |publisher=University of Alabama Press |accessdate=September 8, 2024}}
Career
Her first collection of short stories, Tongues of Flame, published in 1986, won the PEN/Hemingway (1987), the Alabama Author Award (1987), the Lillian Smith Book Award (1991), and the Hillsdale Fiction Prize (2003).{{cite web|title=In Memoriam: Mary Ward Brown June 18, 1917-May 14, 2013|url=http://www.writersforum.org/news_and_reviews/newsroom.html/article/2013/05/14/in-memoriam-mary-ward-brown-june-18-1917-may-14-2013|website=Alabama Writers' Forum}} Following her second collection of short stories, It Wasn't All Dancing, published in 2002, Brown was awarded the Alabama Library Author Award (2003), the Hillsdale Award for Fiction (2003), and the Harper Lee Award (2002).{{cite web|title=It Wasn't All Dancing and Other Stories|url=http://www.uapress.ua.edu/product/It-Wasnt-All-Dancing-and-Other-Stories,1205.aspx|website=University of Alabama Press}}
Author Paul Theroux has said of her writing that it was "...direct, unaffected, unsentimental, and powerful for its simplicity and for its revealing the inner life of rural Alabama...".{{cite book|author=Paul Theroux|title=Deep South: Four Seasons on Back Roads|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=UvbHBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA277|date=2015|publisher=Houghton Mifflin Harcourt|location=New York|isbn=978-0-544-32353-7}} Page 277. Her story "Cure" was included in The Best American Short Stories 1984 (edited by John Updike & Shannon Ravenel).{{cite web|title=The Best American Short Stories 1984 (Table of Contents)|url=https://vufind.carli.illinois.edu/vf-oak/Record/oak_103929/TOC}} Southern journalist John S. Sledge called Brown "our genius, our Chekov".{{cite book|author=John S. Sledge|title=Southern Bound: A Gulf Coast Journalist on Books, Writers, and Literary Pilgrimages of the Heart|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jS8UCAAAQBAJ&q=Mary+Ward+Brown|date=15 March 2013|publisher=University of South Carolina Press|location=Columbia|isbn=978-1-61117-236-2}}
Books
- Tongues of Flame (1986) New York: E.P. Dutton. {{ISBN|9780525244318}}.
- It wasn't all dancing, and other stories (2002) Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. {{ISBN|9780817350079}}.
- Fanning the spark: a memoir (2009) Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. {{ISBN|9780817381547}}.
Death
Brown died of pancreatic cancer in Marion, Alabama, on May 14, 2013.{{cite web|last1=Weber|first1=Bruce|title=Mary Ward Brown, Award-Winning Short Story Writer, Dies at 95|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/23/books/mary-ward-brown-95-award-winning-short-story-writer-dies.html?_r=0|website=The New York Times|date=22 May 2013}}
References
{{Reflist}}
{{Alabama Women's Hall of Fame}}
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ward Brown, Mary}}
Category:People from Perry County, Alabama
Category:Novelists from Alabama
Category:Judson College (Alabama) alumni
Category:20th-century American novelists
Category:American short story writers