Alabama Authors 2020, RIP

 At least five authors with significant Alabama connections died in 2020. Here's a brief look at each of them. 

William Cobb died on February 17. He was born in Eutaw on October 20, 1937,  and grew up in Demopolis. He wrote a number of novels, short story collections and plays during his 30-year writing career. In the Encyclopedia of Alabama entry on Cobb, Carey W. Heatherly wrote, "In addition to racial strife, many of Cobb's works are noted for their considerably strange and dark comedic value consistent with the Southern Gothic genre of literature. Cobb's writings center particularly on characters who triumph and maintain their dignity in the face of failure. He received the Alabama Writers' Forum's Harper Lee Award in 2007."

Source: Encyclopedia of Alabama

Cobb's first novel was published in 1984. 

Published in 1992, this novel looks at racial tension in a fictional small town in Alabama. 

Ann Bowling Pearson died on June 23. She was born in Montgomery on April 6, 1941. Let me quote from her obituary:

"Ann was educated in what were then Lee County schools, graduating from Auburn High School, in what is now East Samford School. She received her bachelor's degree in English from Auburn University in 1963, her master's from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, in 1964, and her Ph.D. in English Literature (emphasis in Victorian literature) in 1971, from Auburn University. She taught at Georgia Southwestern State University, in Americus, Georgia, then at Auburn University. For a time, Ann was a humanities librarian at Auburn University. For many years, she had a newspaper column in the Auburn Bulletin, "In Random Order." She also wrote movie reviews for the Opelika-Auburn News. Ann published annual children's Christmas stories in the Bulletin and The Villager, all of which involved cats. She published three crime novels, then partnered with Auburn natives Ralph Draughon, Jr. and Delos Hughes to publish "Lost Auburn, a Village Remembered in Period Photographs." That was followed by "No Place Like Home," co-authored by Draughon, Hughes, and Emily Amason Sparrow. Ann also authored the Auburn section of "Lee County and Her Forbears," by Alexander Nunn. Dr. Pearson was active in many community endeavors. She was a founding member of the Lee County Humane Society and supported its efforts until her death."

Ann Pearson [1941-2020]

Source: Opelika-Auburn News 25 June 2020

Pearson also published A Stitch in Time #45 in the series of "Zebra Mystery Puzzlers" from Kensington Publishing. Both appeared in 1979. Her PhD dissertation is entitled "Setting in the Works of Charles Dickens." You can read a detailed article about her preservation work at the "Sunny Slope" cottage in Auburn here. Her preservation efforts included an 1854 plantation home, Noble Hall, which along with its outbuildings and acreage had been purchased by her great-grandfather in the 1940's and was her home. 

On July 8 Brad Watson died at his home in Wyoming. Born in Mississippi on July 24, 1955, he received a Masters in Fine Arts from the University of Alabama and later returned for a period as writer in residence. In 1996 while at that latter post he published Last Days of the Dog Men, a collection of stories that took him ten years to write. He subsequently published another collection, Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives in 2010 and two novels, The Heaven of Mercury in 2002 and Miss Jane in 2016. At the time of his death he was teaching at the University of Wyoming. 

Watson at the Alabama Book Festival in Montgomery in 2017

Shirley Ann Grau died August 3 at the age of 91. She was born July 8, 1929, in  New Orleans but grew up in the Montgomery and Selma areas. Over the course of her writing career she published six novels and three collections of stories between 1955 and 1994. In 2006 Selected Stories appeared. Grau won the 1965 Pulitzer Prize for her novel The Keepers of the House, a work published the previous year and set in rural Alabama. Her other fiction was often set in Louisiana, where she lived most of her life. She was inducted into the Alabama Writers Hall of Fame in 2018.

 

Grau's first book and first collection of stories was published in 1955.

This novel appeared in 1971. 

Winston Groom, known to many as the author of Forrest Gump, died on September 17 at age 71. Born in Washington, D.C., on March 23, 1943, he grew up in Mobile and spent much of his adult life in the city. After graduating from the University of Alabama and a tour of duty in Vietnam, Groom worked as a reporter in Washington. 

By 1976 he had begun writing full time, producing three novels from 1978 until 1984. He also wrote his first non-fiction book during this time, Conversations with the Enemy: The Story of PFC Robert Garwood done with Duncan Spencer. In 1985 he returned to Mobile; Forrest Gump was published the following year. He wrote three more novels, Gone the Sun [1988] which is set in Alabama; Such A Pretty, Pretty Girl [1999], a crime thriller set in Los Angeles; and El Paso [2016]. 

Between 1995 and 2018 Groom published 13 works of non-fiction. These titles ranged in subject matter from University of Alabama football to the Civil War and World War II. He was also inducted into the Alabama Writers Hall of Fame in 2018. 

Source: McCall Rare Book & Manuscript Library, University of South Alabama via the Encyclopedia of Alabama. 

I take a look at book covers and other things Gump in a blog post here. The novel was published in 1986 but did not receive much attention until the Tom Hanks film was released in 1994. 

Groom's second novel was published in 1980.