WILLIE MORRIS (1934–1999)

William Weaks “Willie” Morris grew up in Yazoo City, Miss., which he immortalized in his many works of prose. His trademarks were his poetic prose style and his commentaries on the American South, especially the Mississippi Delta. He was a Rhodes Scholar, and in 1967 he became the youngest editor of Harper’s Magazine. As editor of The Texas Observer, he had a penetrating editorial style that gained him admirers and enemies alike. He wrote 19 books in all, among which was his best-selling work North Toward Home, an autobiographical account of his exodus from the South. The work won him the prestigious Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship Award for non-fiction. He left Harper’s Magazine in 1971, and became writer-in-residence at the University of Mississippi. Morris died in 1999 of a heart attack, and is being rediscovered as one of Mississippi’s great writers. His book, My Dog Skip, was made into a movie in 2000, starring Kevin Bacon, Diane Lane, and Frankie Muniz.
by Stephen Enzweiler

Tennessee Williams	Ellen Gilchrist	John Grisham	Margaret Walker Alexander
Clifton Taulbert	Eudora Welty	Richard Wright	Shelby Foote
Jimmy Buffett	Greg Iles	William Faulkner	Jill Conner Browne
	Walker Percy	Willie Morris