Today, January 25th, marks the birthdate of some highly regarded writers.
Gloria Naylor
Gloria Naylor (5 Jan 1950 – 28 Sep 2016) saw her debut novel, The Women of Brewster Place, (1982) win critical acclaim and become an Emmy-nominated miniseries starring Oprah Winfrey.
Gloria’s parents were sharecroppers who migrated from Mississippi to Harlem to seek new opportunities. Her father became a transit worker and her mother a telephone operator. Despite their own limited education, Gloria’s parents encouraged her to read
Gloria Naylor shares her birthday with Virginia Woolf (1882 – 1941) and Robert Burns 1759-1796).
Gloria Naylor (5 Jan 1950 – 28 Sep 2016) saw her debut novel, The Women of Brewster Place, (1982) win critical acclaim and become an Emmy-nominated miniseries starring Oprah Winfrey.
Gloria’s parents were sharecroppers who migrated from Mississippi to Harlem to seek new opportunities. Her father became a transit worker and her mother a telephone operator. Despite their own limited education, Gloria’s parents encouraged her to read and to keep a journal. By the time she was a teenager, Gloria was a prolific writer of poems, short stories, and observations of the world around her.
Gloria’s family moved to Queens in 1963, and she was placed in advanced classes at her new high school. Gloria graduated from high school the year Martin Luther King Jr. was was murdered, and served as a Jehovah’s Witness missionary for seven years. She then enrolled as a nursing student at Brooklyn college, but quickly changed her major to English. Gloria worked her way through college, earning her bachelor’s degree and then a masters degree in African American studies at Yale. Her thesis would become her second novel, Linden Hills.
Gloria’s first published novel, The Women of Brewster Place, as her other novels, addressed social issues such as racism, homophobia, poverty and women’s rights with intensity and grace. She became known for her vivid telling of what it meant to be a black woman in America.
Gloria’s work includes several more novels and inclusion in anthologies. She taught at Cornell, George Washington University, and Boston University. Gloria received numerous awards, ranging from a Guggenheim Fellowship to several National Book Awards.
We’ve Heard it Before – Always That First Sentence!
“One should be able to return to the first sentence of a novel and find the resonances of the entire work.” ~ Gloria Naylor.
We hear it at conferences, in classrooms, at critique groups, on podcasts and on “how to write” blogs. This is timeless advice, folks, and there’s a reason famous authors say it. Time for me to go reevaluate my first pages.
A Good Day to be Born, if You’re a Writer
Gloria Naylor shares her birthday with Virginia Woolf (1882 – 1941) and Robert Burns 1759-1796). My own birthday seems to be heavy with politicians. Perhaps I’ve missed my calling?
