Melany Neilson

Melany Neilson (born Moses Lake, Washington, December 1, 1958) is an American author. She grew up in Ebenezer, Mississippi, and graduated from the University of Mississippi with a degree in English in 1979, and a Masters degree in journalism in 1986.

Her first book, Even Mississippi, a memoir of Southern politics, was published in 1989, and received the Lillian Smith Award, the Mississippi Authors Award, the Gustavas Myers Outstanding Book on Human Rights, and a nomination for the Pulitzer Prize.

Her first novel, The Persia Café, was published in 2001 to wide praise.^[1] The story of a race murder set in a small Mississippi River town in 1962, the novel explores identity, friendship, family, community and race in a turbulent time in American history. A month after the book's publication, publisher HarperCollins identified eight separate sentences copied from^[2] Barbara Kingsolver's 1988 novel The Bean Trees. Neilson immediately changed the eight sentences and her publisher, St. Martin's, printed them in future editions.^[3]. According to St. Martin's, Neilson apologized in a letter to Kingsolver for "the unintentional inclusion of the language in question," and offered to apologize in person.^[2]

Neilson is married to Frederick G. Slabach, President of Texas Wesleyan University in Fort Worth, Texas and Former Executive Officer of the Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation.^[4] They have three children.

References

• Melany Neilson bio

1. ^ 'Persia Cafe' a disturbingly beautiful tale, Denver Post, March 4, 2001, http://extras.denverpost.com/books/persia0304.htm 
2. ^ ^{a b} [1] Entertainment Weekly, May 2, 2001
3. ^ [2] Seattlepi.com, April 21, 2001
4. ^ [3]

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Name	Neilson, Melany
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Date of birth	December 1, 1958
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