Major Works
Carolyn J. Brown, photo used with permission
- Song of My Life: A Biography of Margaret Walker (2014)
- A Daring Life: A Biography of Eudora Welty (2012)
Biography
Carolyn J. Brown, a native of Greensboro, North Carolina, moved to Jackson in 2006. She became an adjunct professor at Millsaps College and currently resides in Jackson, Mississippi. She is a writer, editor, and independent scholar who has taught at University of North Carolina in Greensboro, Elon University, and Millsaps College.
Her work has been published in College Language Journal and Notes on Mississippi Writers. Her non-fiction books include Song of My Life: A Biography of Margaret Walker and A Daring Life: A Biography of Eudora Welty.
A Daring Life: A Biography Of Eudora Welty, published by University Press 2012, won the Mississippi Library Association Award for Nonfiction in 2013 and was the Mississippi Library Commission’s selection to represent the state of Mississippi at the National Book Festival in Washington in 2012.
Brown chose to write about Margaret Walker for her second biography after reading an article in Southern Living about Mississippi’s Literary Trail which mentioned “the Margaret Walker Center, home to the nation’s second largest collection of a modern black female author’s papers, second only to Maya Angelou’s.”
Brown began to research Margaret Walker and was excited to find “a second important woman writer from Jackson who has been sorely overlooked yet had friendships with and connections to many of our most well-known 20th-century African-American writers.” Song of My Life: A Biography Of Margaret Walker was published by the University Press in 2014.
Related Websites
- Questions and answers with Brown on Clarion-Ledger Life page.
- Carolyn J. Brown’s website
- Link to Brown discussing her new biography of Margaret Walker
- University Press of Mississippi page about A Daring Life
- Brown talks at Mississippi Department of Archives and History.