Wylene Dunbar

Major Works

• My Life with Corpses (2004)
• Margaret Cape: The novel (1997)

Wylene Dunbar: A Biography

by Amanda Aycock (SHS)

Wylene Dunbar was born in Sterling, Kansas.  Her father was a wheat farmer and also raised cattle.  Her mother is a painter and photographer.  Dunbar grew up in a small town called Turon, Kansas, with a population of about 600.   She graduated from Fairfield High School in Langdon, Kansas.   Dunbar then attended Wichita State University, where she graduated with a B.S. in Mathematics.  She then  traveled to Vanderbilt University and earned her M.A. and Ph.D. in philosophy. In 1977 Dunbar went to the University of Mississippi  in Oxford to teach Philosophy.  In 1979 she entered Ole Miss Law School, where she graduated first in her class in August of 1982.  Dunbar then went into the Holcomb Dunbar Law firm. in 1989 and was a civil trial lawyer for ten years.

In 1992  Dunbar published her first short story entitled My Life with Corpses using the pen name W. W. Michaud. The story was published in the South Dakota Review  Also in 1992 she went on full time leave to complete her first novel entitled Margaret Cape: a novel for which she  was awarded the 1998 fiction award from the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters.  Dunbar’s second novel is an extension of her short story My Life with Corpses.

Dunbar always dreamed of being a writer and now her dream has been fulfilled. She  is currently residing in Oxford, Mississippi, (See update below) and has her own law firm.

UPDATE:

Dunbar’s second novel My Life with Corpses was published in 2004. She was an Oxford, Mississippi, resident for many years, but she has now moved to northern California and lives in Nevada City.

An E-mail Interview with Wylene Dunbar   (1998)

by Amanda Aycock (SHS)

1.     Who is your favorite author?

I don’t have a “favorite” author.  The following persons are a few of the authors whom I admire: Virginia Woolf; Walker Percy; Gabriel Garcia Marquez; James Joyce; Carol Shields; Carol Shields; Ken Kesey; J.D. Salinger; Eudora Welty.

2.     What author do you believe has influenced you the most?

I don’t know what author influenced me the most.

3.     When did you become interested in writing?

In grade school and high school, I wrote poetry, songs, and a couple of short stories.  Being a writer was always one of my dreams.  I planned to return to Kansas to write a novel after I completed my Ph.D.   I did return and tried to write, but I was only 24, not very insightful, and it took me about two years to figure out I had nothing to say and that I should get on with my life.

4.    What advice do you have to aspiring authors?

Advice to aspiring writers: Write a lot- – writing gets better with practice.  Read a lot– -writing gets better with reading, and it is great for your vocabulary.  Don’t expect advice to aspiring writers to help very much.

5.    Is your novel connected to your life in anyway?

All novels are probably connected to their authors’ lives in some way.  Mine is, certainly, but not in any way that I can explain in a few words.

6.    What awards did you receive for your novel?

For my novel, I won the 1998 fiction award from the Mississippi Institute of Arts & Letters.

Related Websites

• Official web site for Wylene Dunbar.
• The Origin of My Life with Corpses on Dunbar’s web Site.
• Reviews of Margaret Cape by various readers on Amazon.com site.
• Recipe for Sexy Spaghetti by Wylene Dunbar in Dean Faulner Wells’ The New Great American Writers Cookbook.
• Editorial reviews of My Life with Corpses

 

Bibliography

• Dunbar, Wylene.  Interview by Amanda Aycock. November 26, 1998.
• http://www.burkesbooks.com/dunbar.htm
• http://www.opengroup.com/open/fibooks/015/0151002487.shtml