A series of biographies and memoirs that explore all aspects of contemporary American life and preserve the ineffable in the human experience.
For more information or to submit a proposal, contact acquisitions editor Lisa McMurtray.
Willie Morris Books in Memoir and Biography
All the Things We Didn't Say
In this poignant and introspective dual memoir, Marion Garrard Barnwell embarks on a deeply personal journey. Inspired by the memoir of her maternal grandmother, Mary DuBose Trice Clark, affectionately ...
Larry Brown
Larry Brown (1951–2004) was unique among writers who started their careers in the late twentieth century. Unlike most of them—his friends Clyde Edgerton, Jill McCorkle, Rick Bass, and Kaye Gibbons, ...
The Steps We Take
Ellen Ann Fentress is a veteran writer for the New York Times, the Washington Post, and The Atlantic. She’s also a seasoned southern woman, specifically a white Mississippi one. “Women do a lot for ...
To Dance, to Live
Thalia Mara’s story spans the history of dance in the twentieth century and the rise of the arts in her adopted city of Jackson, Mississippi. As an adolescent Mara (1911–2003) studied with renowned ...
With Hawks and Angels
With Hawks and Angels: Episodes from a Southern Life chronicles the fortunate life of a man born in the Cajun country of Louisiana and his interaction with the three distinct parts of his home state: ...
Becoming Ezra Jack Keats
Becoming Ezra Jack Keats offers the first complete biography of acclaimed children’s author and illustrator Ezra Jack Keats (1916–1983) intended for adult readers. Drawing extensively from his unpublished ...
Political Animal
Named a 2024 Honorable Mention Book by the Louisiana Library Association
During Mardi Gras 1973, Stewart Butler (1930–2020) fell in love with Alfred Doolittle—a wealthy socialite and schizophrenic ...
The Mama Chronicles
Winner of the 2022 Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award for Life Writing
Growing up in the Delta town of Yazoo City, Mississippi, Teresa Nicholas believed that she and her country-born and -bred ...
Flights from Fassberg
Wolfgang W. E. Samuel, Colonel, US Air Force (Ret. ), interweaves his story and that of his family with the larger history of World War II and the postwar world through a moving recollection and exploration ...
The Nightcrawler King
While growing up in rural Indiana during World War II, William Fagaly began his first venture—collecting and selling earthworms to locals—from which he was christened with a childhood moniker. The ...