|
Cynthia
Shearer was born in Massachusetts on June 25, 1955. She lived there
for the first nineteen days of her life, then moved Georgia. Shearer has
describes herself as a loner who "worked at not fitting in." She
loved to write even as a child, but music played an equally
important role in her life. For Shearer, music and writing
work hand in hand--each art influencing the other. In high
school, Shearer was an activist who deeply opposed the Vietnam War.
In 1980, Shearer
moved to Oxford, Mississippi and worked toward a PhD in English at
the University of Mississippi. At this time, she began writing more
than ever. She was driven by a desire to write about things that
mattered to people--mattered to her. In 1987, she and her husband
Dan Williams, chairman of the English department at Ole Miss, had a
daughter.
In 1994, Cynthia
Shearer accepted the position of curator of Rowan Oak, the home of
William Faulkner. Later, she gave up this position in order to
devote more time to her writing. Her first novel,
The Wonder Book of the Air, was published in 1996 after
four years in the making. The novel won the 1996 prize for fiction
from the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters.
The Celestial Jukebox
is her second novel.
Shearer now resides in Houston Texas with her husband and daughter.
|
Cynthia Shearer
SLR
Recommends
|
