Profile of Willie Morris on Famous Like Me

Willie Morris (November 29, 1934 — August 2, 1999), was an American writer and editor born in Jackson, Mississippi, though his family later moved to Yazoo City, Mississippi, which he immortalized in his works of prose. Morris' trademark was his lyrical prose style and reflections on the American South, particularly the Mississippi Delta. In 1967 he became the youngest editor of Harper's Magazine. He wrote several works of fiction and non-fiction, including his seminal book North Toward Home.

Early years

Morris' parents moved to Yazoo City, Mississippi when he was just six months old. Yazoo City figures prominently in much of Morris' writing. After graduating as valedictorian of his high school class, Morris traveled to Austin to attend the University of Texas.

His senior year in college, Morris was elected editor of the university's student newspaper, the award-winning The Daily Texan. His scathing editorials against segregation, censorship and state officials' collusion with oil and gas interests soon earned him both respect and enmity, particularly from the university's Board of Regents.

Morris graduated in 1956 and began studying history at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. He returned to the United States to be the editor of the Texas Observer, a liberal weekly newsmagazine.

Harper's Magazine

Morris joined the staff of Harper's in 1963 as an associate editor, becoming editor-in-chief four years later, shortly before North Toward Home was published. North Toward Home, which became a bestseller and received the prestigious Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship Award for nonfiction, was an autobiographical account of Morris' flight from the South. It has become revered for its tender reflections on Southern culture, particularly by other alienated expatriate Southerners who moved north but still feel drawn to their home states.

Morris returns home

In 1980, Morris moved back to his native state to be a writer-in-residence at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, Mississippi. One of his books, My Dog Skip , was made into a 2000 movie starring Frankie Muniz, Diane Lane, Luke Wilson and Kevin Bacon. Morris died just before the movie debuted. He is buried in Glenwood Cemetery in Yazoo City, mere steps away from the "grave" of the fictitious Witch of Yazoo, a character from one of Morris' books, Good Old Boy.

Books by Willie Morris

My Dog Skip

My Cat Spit McGee

Faulkner's Mississippi

Good Old Boy: A Delta Boyhood

The Courting of Marcus Dupree

New York Days

The Last of the Southern Girls

My Mississippi

Terrains of the Heart and Other Essays on Home

Conversations with Willie Morris

Ghosts of Medgar Evers

Homecomings

South Today

Always Stand in Against the Curve, and Other Sports Stories

Yazoo: Integration in a Deep-Southern Town

A Texan at Oxford

North Toward Home

After All, It's Only a Game

Prayer for the Opening of the Little League Season

James Jones: A Friendship

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