Willie Morris (1934–1999)
by Stephen Enzweiler
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.
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Stephen Enzweiler is Contributing Editor to Y’all Magazine as well as a short story fiction author. Write to him at steve@yall.com. Learn more about his writings at www.StephenEnzweiler.com
Other Articles by Stephen Enzweiler:
The Legacy of Mississippi Writers
William Faulkner: The Agony and the Sweat
A Streetcar Named Tennessee
Bard of the American Illiad
The Existential Walker Percy
Eudora Welty
Richard Wright
Willie Morris
Ellen Gilchrist
Oxford Wedding
Stepping Off the Trace: Florence and the Shoals
Corinth: Still A Crossroads Destination
Mississippi Rising
