James Alan McPherson (September 16, 1943 – July 27, 2016) was an American essayist and short-story writer. 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. At the time of his death, McPherson was a professor emeritus of fiction at the Iowa Writers' Workshop.
Life and work
Early life and education
McPherson was born in Savannah, Georgia, on September 16, 1943, 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. In 1968, McPherson received a LL.B. from Harvard Law School, where he partially financed his studies by working as a janitor.
During this period in his life, he gained the attention of Ralph Ellison (1913–1994), who became both a friend and mentor to the young McPherson. In December 1970, McPherson interviewed Ellison McPherson also initiated a friendship with Albert Murray shortly after the publication of Murray's The Omni-Americans: Black Experience & American Culture (1970).
Career
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 served as acting director of the program for two years following the death of Frank Conroy in 2005. It was in Japan, he once wrote, where he went to lay down "the burden carried by all black Americans, especially the males." He received the Pulitzer Prize in 1978 for his short story collection Elbow Room, becoming the first black writer to receive the program's Fiction Prize.
He was the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship in 1981, In 2000, John Updike selected McPherson's short story "Gold Coast" for his collection Best American Short Stories of the Century (Houghton Mifflin).In 2020, an Iowa City park was renovated and renamed after McPherson. Previously Creekside Park, James Alan McPherson Park serves as a memorial and a gathering space for the community.
Death
McPherson died in hospice on July 27, 2016, in Iowa City, Iowa, due to complications of pneumonia. He was 72. He is survived by a daughter, Rachel McPherson (a child from his first marriage to the former Sarah Charlton, which had ended in divorce); a son from another relationship, Benjamin Miyamoto; a sister; and a brother.
- Elbow Room: Stories (New York: Atlantic-Little, Brown, 1977)
Nonfiction
- Railroad: Trains and Train People in American Culture, edited with Miller Williams; (New York: Random House, 1976);
- Fathering Daughters: Reflections by Men, edited with DeWitt Henry; (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1998);
- On Becoming an American Writer: Essays & Nonfiction, selected and introduced by Anthony Walton (Boston, MA: Godine, 2023);
Stories
{| class="wikitable"
|+
|-
! Title !! Publication !! Collected in
|-
| "Gold Coast" || The Atlantic (November 1968) || rowspan=10| Hue and Cry
|-
| "A Matter of Vocabulary" || The Atlantic (February 1969)
|-
| "Of Cabbages and Kings" || The Atlantic (April 1969)
|-
| "On Trains" || rowspan=7| Hue and Cry (Summer 1969)
|-
| "A Solo Song: For Doc"
|-
| "All the Lonely People"
|-
| "An Act of Prostitution"
|-
| "Private Domain"
|-
| "A New Place"
|-
| "Hue and Cry"
|-
| "The Silver Bullet" || Playboy (July 1972) || rowspan=12| Elbow Room
|-
| "The Faithful" || The Atlantic (April 1973)
|-
| "The Story of a Scar" || The Atlantic (December 1973)
|-
| "Why I Like Country Music" || The Harvard Advocate (Winter 1974)
|-
| "I Am an American" || Ploughshares 2.2 (1974)
|-
| "Problems of Art" || The Iowa Review 6.2 (Spring 1975)
|-
| "A Sense of Story" || The Massachusetts Review 18.3 (Autumn 1977)
|-
| "The Story of a Dead Man" || rowspan=5| Elbow Room (Autumn 1977)
|-
| "Widows and Orphans"
|-
| "A Loaf of Bread"
|-
| "Just Enough for the City"
|-
| "Elbow Room"
|-
| "There Was Once a State Called Franklin" || Callaloo 2.2 (May 1979) || -
|-
|}