Jesse Hill Ford

Jesse Hill Ford
Born	December 28, 1928(1928-12-28) Troy, Alabama
Died	June 1, 1996(1996-06-01) (aged 67)
Occupation	Writer
Nationality	American
Genres	Southern literature

Jesse Hill Ford (December 28, 1928 – June 1, 1996) was an American writer of Southern literature, best known for his critical and commercial success in short fiction as well as the novels Mountains of Gilead and The Liberation of Lord Byron Jones.

Born in Troy, Alabama, Ford was raised in Nashville, Tennessee. He attended Montgomery Bell Academy and received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Vanderbilt University. His education was interrupted by the Korean War, during which he served in the United States Navy. Following his discharge, he enrolled in the University of Florida, where he received a Master of Arts in 1955. After graduation he worked as a public relations director, but in 1957 he decided to devote himself to writing on a full-time basis. He and his family moved to Humboldt, Tennessee. Two years later, he won an Atlantic Monthly prize for the short story The Surest Thing in Show Business. In 1961 he spent a year at the University of Oslo as a Fulbright Scholar and published his first novel, Mountains of Gilead, and in 1964 he wrote both the teleplay and theatrical scripts of The Conversion of Buster Drumwright.

One year later, Ford published The Liberation of Lord Byron Jones, which was selected by the Book of the Month Club. A critical and commercial success, it earned him a Guggenheim Fellowship for fiction writing, and was later adapted by Ford and Stirling Silliphant for a 1970 feature film directed by William Wyler. Other works by Ford include Fishes, Birds, and Sons of Men, a compilation of his early short stories; The Feast of Saint Barnabas, which focused on a Florida race riot; and The Raider, a historical novel set in Tennessee before and during the American Civil War.

In 1971, Ford was acquitted in the shooting death of a black soldier he believed was a threat to his family when he found him trespassing on his property. Coincidentally, the man's female companion was a relative of the woman who had served as the basis for The Liberation of Lord Byron Jones. He also contributed guest columns to USA Today in 1989 and 1990, after changing from political liberal to hard-core conservative. Without former The Atlantic|Atlantic Monthly]] editor Edward Weeks to encourage and shape his work, he was unable to successfully write literary fiction, although he continued to play the role of Southern gentleman/author. He eventually returned to Nashville where, severely depressed following open-heart surgery and the publication of his collected letters, he committed suicide.

References

• Jesse Hill Ford at TennesseeEncyclopedia.net
• Jesse Hill Ford at AlabamaLiteraryMap.org
• Works by or about Jesse Hill Ford in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• New York Times obituary

Persondata
Name	Ford, Jesse Hill
Alternative names
Short description	Novelist, short story writer
Date of birth	December 28, 1928
Place of birth	Troy, Alabama, United States
Date of death	June 1, 1996
Place of death	Nashville, Tennessee, United States