James Alan McPherson was born in Savannah, Georgia on September 16, 1943.


 He was the second of four children.

His father was a master electrician (the first African-American so recognized in Georgia),and his mother (born Mabel Small) was a maid.


He says it was his discovery of the "colored branch" of the public library that changed his life. When he started reading books, McPherson learned that words, even without pictures, "gave up their secret meanings, spoke of other worlds, made me know that pain was a part of other people's lives."


He attended Morgan State University from 1963 to 1964 before receiving his undergraduate degree in history and English from Morris Brown College in 1965. In 1968, McPherson received a LL.B. from Harvard Law School, where he partially financed his studies by working as a janitor.


He was the first African-American writer to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and was included among the first group of artists who received a MacArthur Fellowship.


McPherson taught English and creative writing at the University of California, Santa Cruz (assistant professor; 1969–1971), the Harvard University summer school (1972), Morgan State University (assistant professor; 1975–1976) and the University of Virginia (associate professor; 1976–1981) before joining the Iowa Writers' Workshop in 1981, with whom he was associated for the remainder of his life.


He was also a visiting scholar at Yale Law School (1978–1979) and a fellow at Stanford University's Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (1997–1998; 2002–2003). Significantly, McPherson lectured in Japan (at Meiji University and Chiba University), a country whose society and culture profoundly affected him. It was in Japan, he once wrote, where he went to lay down "the burden carried by all black Americans, especially the males."


McPherson died on July 27, 2016, in Iowa City, Iowa, due to complications of pneumonia. He was 72... continue reading 

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