- Lewis Nordan
Infobox Writer
imagesize = 150px
name =Lewis Nordan
|birthdate=Birth date and age|1939|8|23|mf=y
birthplace=Forest, Mississippi
occupation=Writer ,Professor
genre =Literature Lewis Nordan (
23 August 1939 - ) Born inForest, Mississippi ,United States , he grew up inItta Bena, Mississippi . In 1983, at age forty-five, Nordan published his first collection of stories, "Welcome to the Arrow-Catcher Fair". The collection established him as a writer in the grotesque Southern tradition ofWilliam Faulkner ,Erskine Caldwell , andFlannery O'Connor . It also established a place for Nordan’s fiction, the fictional Arrow Catcher, Mississippi, a small town in theMississippi Delta based loosely on Nordan’s hometown ofItta Bena .After the short-story collection "The All-Girl Football Team" (1986) followed "Music of the Swamp" (1991), a novel/short-story cycle featuring Nordan's spiritual alter ego, the young Sugar Mecklin, as the protagonist. The book features aspects of
magic realism that would become one of Nordan's trademarks, along with a peculiar mix of the tragic and the hilarious."Wolf Whistle" (1993), Nordan's second novel, was both a critical and public success. It won the Southern Book Award and gained him a wider audience. The book deals with one of the most notorious racial subjects in recent Southern history: the murder of
Emmett Till .The novel "The Sharpshooter Blues" (1995) is a lyrical meditation on America's gun culture, as well as another portrait of the grotesque lives in Itta Bena. With the
coming-of-age novel "Lightning Song" (1997), Nordan moved from Itta Bena to the hill country of Mississippi. The novel still features Nordan's magic Mississippi realism, complete with singing llamas and poetic lightning strikes.In 2000, Nordan published a "fictional memoir," "Boy With Loaded Gun".
Before retiring in 2005, Lewis Nordan lived in
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania , where he taughtCreative Writing at theUniversity of Pittsburgh .Works
*"Welcome to the Arrow-Catcher Fair" (1983) - short stories
*"The All-Girl Football Team" (1986) - short stories
*"Music of the Swamp" (1991) - novel/short story cycle
*"Wolf Whistle" (1993) - novel
*"The Sharpshooter Blues" (1995) - novel
*"Sugar Among the Freaks: Selected Stories" (1996) - short stories
*"Lightning Song" (1997) - novel
*"Boy With Loaded Gun" (2000) - memoirExternal links
* [http://www.algonquin.com/nordan/index.cgi The Lewis Nordan Fan Club at Algonquin Books]
* [http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/english/ms-writers/dir/nordan_lewis/ Lewis Nordan at The Mississippi Writer's Page]
* [http://www.english.pitt.edu/people/nordan.html Lewis Nordan's page at the University of Pittsburgh]
* [http://www.wordriot.org/template_2.php?ID=1589 Interview with Lewis Nordan by Dory Adams]
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