JAMES ALAN MCPHERSON
James Alan McPherson is among that generation of African American writers
and intellectuals, including Charles Johnson and Stanley Crouch, who were
inspired and mentored by Ralph Ellison. McPherson's early short story
"Gold Coast" won the 1965 Atlantic Monthly Firsts award. In 1978 he was
the first African American recipient of the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for
his 1977 story collection, Elbow Room. Frequently anthologized, McPherson
has received such prestigious honors as a Guggenheim Fellowship (1972-73),
the MacArthur Fellowship (1981), several Pushcart Prizes, and induction
into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1995).
Born in Savannah on September 16, 1943, before integration, McPherson
recollects playing hooky from school in order to read in the "colored
branch" of the local Carnegie Library. In 1962 he worked as a dining-car
waiter for the Great Northern Railroad. He attended Morgan State
University in Baltimore, Maryland, from 1963 to 1964 and earned a B.A.
degree at Morris Brown College in Atlanta in 1965. Subsequently he
attended Harvard University Law School (LL.B., 1968) in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, the Writers Workshop at the University of Iowa, and the
Yale University Law School in New Haven, Connecticut. With his M.F.A.
degree in creative writing from the University of Iowa (1969), he has
taught at a variety of institutions, including the University of
California, Santa Cruz; Harvard University; the University of Virginia;
and the University of Iowa, where he is currently professor of English. He
has also lectured in Japan.
As a writer McPherson sees himself most fully as a practitioner of the
short story. His stories have appeared in many different periodicals,
including mainstream magazines like the Atlantic Monthly and Playboy and
small-press journals like the Harvard Review and Ploughshares. The best
of his work has been collected in Hue and Cry (1968) and Elbow Room
(1977). His memoir, Crabcakes (1998), which records his life from 1976
through his experiences teaching in Japan, is also very much in the mode
of a series of stories.
Like Ralph Ellison, McPherson sees African American culture as integrally
connected with the "white" culture. He doesn't consider himself a "black
writer" but rather thinks of himself in relation to other practitioners of
the American tradition of short fiction. Although he writes on topics
drawn from his experiences as a black man, he rejects the notion that
black or white fiction must necessarily concern certain black or white
topics. Indeed, his concern is to record stories that might be lost
because of such conformity.
As an editor and critic, McPherson has produced several books. Railroad:
Trains and Train People (1976), coedited with poet Miller Williams, grew
out of his experiences working on the railroad. In association with DeWitt
Henry, founding editor of Ploughshares, McPherson compiled and edited
Confronting Racial Difference (1990) and Fathering Daughters: Reflections
by Men (1998). In 2000 he published A Region Not Home: Reflections from
Exile, a collection of twelve essays and reviews. It includes his classic
"On Becoming an American Writer" and "Gravitas," his appreciation of Ralph
Ellison on the occasion of the posthumous publication of Ellison's novel
Juneteenth in 1999.
James Alan McPherson is among that generation of African American writers
and intellectuals, including Charles Johnson and Stanley Crouch, who were
inspired and mentored by Ralph Ellison. McPherson's early short story
"Gold Coast" won the 1965 Atlantic Monthly Firsts award. In 1978 he was
the first African American recipient of the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for
his 1977 story collection, Elbow Room. Frequently anthologized, McPherson
has received such prestigious honors as a Guggenheim Fellowship (1972-73),
the MacArthur Fellowship (1981), several Pushcart Prizes, and induction
into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1995).
Born in Savannah on September 16, 1943, before integration, McPherson
recollects playing hooky from school in order to read in the "colored
branch" of the local Carnegie Library. In 1962 he worked as a dining-car
waiter for the Great Northern Railroad. He attended Morgan State
University in Baltimore, Maryland, from 1963 to 1964 and earned a B.A.
degree at Morris Brown College in Atlanta in 1965. Subsequently he
attended Harvard University Law School (LL.B., 1968) in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, the Writers Workshop at the University of Iowa, and the
Yale University Law School in New Haven, Connecticut. With his M.F.A.
degree in creative writing from the University of Iowa (1969), he has
taught at a variety of institutions, including the University of
California, Santa Cruz; Harvard University; the University of Virginia;
and the University of Iowa, where he is currently professor of English. He
has also lectured in Japan.
As a writer McPherson sees himself most fully as a practitioner of the
short story. His stories have appeared in many different periodicals,
including mainstream magazines like the Atlantic Monthly and Playboy and
small-press journals like the Harvard Review and Ploughshares. The best
of his work has been collected in Hue and Cry (1968) and Elbow Room
(1977). His memoir, Crabcakes (1998), which records his life from 1976
through his experiences teaching in Japan, is also very much in the mode
of a series of stories.
Like Ralph Ellison, McPherson sees African American culture as integrally
connected with the "white" culture. He doesn't consider himself a "black
writer" but rather thinks of himself in relation to other practitioners of
the American tradition of short fiction. Although he writes on topics
drawn from his experiences as a black man, he rejects the notion that
black or white fiction must necessarily concern certain black or white
topics. Indeed, his concern is to record stories that might be lost
because of such conformity.
As an editor and critic, McPherson has produced several books. Railroad:
Trains and Train People (1976), coedited with poet Miller Williams, grew
out of his experiences working on the railroad. In association with DeWitt
Henry, founding editor of Ploughshares, McPherson compiled and edited
Confronting Racial Difference (1990) and Fathering Daughters: Reflections
by Men (1998). In 2000 he published A Region Not Home: Reflections from
Exile, a collection of twelve essays and reviews. It includes his classic
"On Becoming an American Writer" and "Gravitas," his appreciation of Ralph
Ellison on the occasion of the posthumous publication of Ellison's novel
Juneteenth in 1999.