Send Mail to MSW
More information on MSW--Upcoming Classes, Etc.
Kids
Teens
Blogger Blog
Website Blog
Snapshots
Blog Archives 1st half 2006
Blog Archives 2nd half 2006
Blog archives 2005
Blog Archives 2004
MSW's Books
School Visits
New Book for Kids
Billie of Fish House Lane
From Montemayor Press
Read a chapter:
Click on Catalogue,
Literature for Children
About MSW
Upcoming MSW EventsNews About MSW
Special Page for Kids
Books by MSW
Book Page
Order Books
Picture Album
Online Classes
MSW Online Writing
MSW Biography
Nonfiction by MSW
School Visits Workshops
Free Newsletter
Writing Exercises
Interview with MSW
Article about MSW
MSW's Resume
Story Pedestal Magazine
Review Main Street Rag
A literary Map of
West Virginia!
Writers' Links
& Resources
Resources for writers
Poetry
Daily
Writers
Almanac
How Artists Get Paid
Int. Women's Writing Guild
New Publishing Paradigm
Resources for writers
Thunderburst
Edwards Bros. Printers
Here's a webpage at Yahoo that I set up in about 5 minutes. It has ads, but it is REALLY quick and REALLY easy to do.
Writing by MSW
Online Fiction
Online
Nonfiction
Article
on Revision
Article
on Dialogue
Getting
Published
Reviews
Books
Adult Fiction
Books for Children
Books on Writing
Free Newsletter
for Readers
Writers'
Websites
Deedee
Agee
Roberta Allen
Belinda
Anderson
Pat
Arnow
Ellen Bass
Ed Davis
Norah Dooley
Barbara
Crooker
Jane Ciabattari
Pamela Erens
Carol Emshwiller
Shelley Ettinger
Neva Hamilton
Jane Hicks
Tayari Jones
Nathan Leslie
Phillip Lopate
George Ella Lyon
Jeff Mann
Sara Miller
Ed Myers
Hilton Obenzinger
Lance
Olsen
Cat Pleska
Thaddeus Rutkowski
Larissa Shmailo
Juanita Torrence-
Thompson
Rhea Tregebov
BJ Ward
Crystal Wilkinson
Edgardo Vega Yunque
Larry Zirlin
FamilyOriented WebsitesEllen Kahaner's Mural class
Reading and Traveling with Kids
More
Jeremy Osner
Photos and Art
Some great graphics?
http://ann-s-thesia.com/
Visual Artists's Websites
Charlie
Cowger
Ann
Olson
Rochelle Ratner
Duane Smith
Ella
Yang
Brooklyn by Ella Yang
Music& Mixed Media Websites
Peter Sciaino
Deep Listening
Blogs I Read
The Compulsive Reader
National Book Critics Circle
Sherry Chandler
Fred First
Cat Pleska
Valerie Nieman
Dee Rimbaud
Larissa Shmailo
Christopher Vera
David Weinberger
Lisa WIlliams
Loho (Group Blog about the Lower East Side)
Brooklyn Parrots Blog!
More Links
Nordic Walking
Weinberger Explains the Web
MSW's Favorites
Ethical
Culture Society
Appalachian
Audiobooks
Sam. Pepys Diary
Poetry Daily
Verse Daily
Poet of the Week from NC
World Wide Words
Writers
Almanac
Meredith Sue Willis
Author and TeacherBiography Blog Books for Readers Contact Home Kids MSW Info MSW's Books Online Classes
Order Books MSW Online Resources for Writers Teens Workshops Writing Exercises
Today isSpecial offer-- Buy books at discount!
Biography
MSW 3-20-08
Born and raised in West Virginia, Meredith Sue Willis was educated in the public schools of Shinnston,
where her father was her science teacher. Her mother was also a part-time teacher, and all four of her aunts and uncles were teachers. Her paternal grandparents operated a country store; her maternal grandfather witnessed the Great Monongah mine explosion of 1907, in which hundreds of miners were killed, and her maternal grandmother was a mining camp midwife. Willis attended Bucknell University for two years, then spent a year as a Volunteer in Service to America (VISTA) in Norfolk, Virginia-- the subject of Only Great Changes (Scribner's 1985; Hamilton Stone Editions, 1997). After the year in VISTA, she returned to Barnard College in New York City where she was involved in work against the Vietnam War. She was a member of the Students for a Democratic Society and a participant in the 1968 Columbia University anti-war sit-ins, the subject of her novel Trespassers (Ham
ilton Stone Editions, 1997). She graduated from Barnard College Phi Beta Kappa and Magna Cum Laude. After working as a recreation therapist for a year at Bellevue Hospital, she took a Master of Fine Arts degree from Columbia University.
Her first published book was A Space Apart (Scribner's, 1979) followed by Higher Ground (Scribner's, 1981; Hamilton Stone Editions 1996) and Only Great Changes (Scribner's, 1985; Hamilton Stone Editions1997).In the early nineteen-seventies, she began to work as a writer-in-the-schools with Teachers & Writers Collaborative, one of the earliest of the arts-in-education organizations, and has continued to work as a w
riter-in-the-schools through various arts organizations, including Teachers & Writers and the New Jersey State Arts Council. She has given workshops and keynote addresses to teachers and students from Massachusetts to New York, New Jersey, Texas, and California.
The Gang at Teachers & Writers Collaborative in 1977--
MSW is front row, second from right (For all the names, click here.)Teachers & Writers publishes her books about writing and the teaching of writing: Personal Fiction Writing (1984; 2000), Blazing Pencils (1990), and Deep Revision (1993). Montemayor Press publishes her novels for children, including her recent Billie of Fish House Lane. Her other recent books include a novel, Oradell at Sea (West Virginia University Press 2002; paperback 2003), a collection of short stories, Dwight's House and Other Stories (Hamilton Stone Editions, 2004), and a science fiction novel for young adults, The City Built of Starships (Montemayor Press, 2004).
Meredith Sue Willis has won many prizes for her writing, including fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. She has participated in the Circuit Writers program of the West Virginia Humanities Council. Her writing about the Appalachian Region was the subject of the Fourteenth Annual Emory & Henry Literary Festival in Emory, Virginia, in 1995, and the proceedings of that festival were published in a special issue of The Iron Mountain Review (available from Box 64, Emory & Henry College, Emory, VA 24327). She was also the featured writer in the Fall, 2006 issue of Appalachian Heritage.
She has also received the Literary Award of the West Virginia Library Association and was the 1990 West Virginia Italian Heritage Festival Non-Italian Woman of the Year. In May 2004, she received an Honorary Doctorate in Humane Letters from West Virginia University. Willis now lives in New Jersey with her husband, Andrew B. Weinberger, a physician with a specialty in rheumatology. Their son Joel just graduated from Brown University. She is active in the Essex Ethical Culture Society and in anti-racism work through the South Orange-Maplewood Community Coaltion on Race. In her spare time, she tries to prove the Garden State is really that by keeping a four season organic garden in her backyard.
Photos above show Shinnston HIgh School (photo by Charlie Cowger ); MSW in 1969; a shot of student sit-ins at Columbia University in 1968; the Gang at Teachers & Writers Collaborative in 1977; MSW with her babyhood friend, former West Virginia University President David C. Hardesty in 2004; and an October 2007 picture of Sarah Zakowski, Joel Weinberger, Andy Weinberger, and MSW at the Mission Dolores, San Francisco.
Featured Book
If you order this month's featured book by direct mail, you may take 10% off your total order, excluding shipping & handling and tax. Order from the Order-by-Mail page.
Trespassers
A novel set during the student strikes and
sit-ins at Columbia University in 1968..."With the same attention to detail she brought to her character's small town childhood, Willis brings the people, ambiance and events of the urban experience out of the past and into a fresh light 30 years later. The silky locution that springs from the Appalachian heritage of storytelling is fully empowered here. Critics agree: Others have written of the same era, but few write as well."
-- Claudia Ebeling in Bucknell World
Trespassers, the final volume in Meredith Sue Willis's luminous Blair Morgan trilogy, brings its West Virginia-born heroine to the brink of adulthood and to the epicenter of her generations' rage. it is 1967, and 20-something Blair is off to New York City to begin life on her own....The novel is different in tone than the earlier books of the trilogy, in which it was possible to detect the cadence of West Virginia (right down to Blair being called Blair Ellen by those who knew her then). This book is blunter, with more dialogue. There's no mistaking New York.
-- Carol Herman in The Washington Times
Willis demolishes dreaded Appalachian female stereotypes....Blair Ellen is a particular girl, to be sure, from a particular region of the country, which itself represents the reforming spirit of the turbulent ‛60's, but her aspirations and experiences in social action speak to a collective, inclusive identity which makes her a representative of her generation, not her region.
— Gina Herring, Appalachian Journal, Volume 25, Number 4, Summer 1998.
Top row, left to right: , Bob Sievert, Phillip Lopate, Mark Solomon, Wesley Brown, RIchard Perry, Steve Schrader, Sylvia Sandovaal, Adalberto Ortiz; second row left to right, Glenda Adams; Laura Gilpin; front row, left to right, Teri Mack, Barbara Siegel, Nancy Larson Shapiro, Miguel Ortiz, Meredith Sue Willis, Karen Hubert.
Subscribe to my Free Newsletter
for Readers and Writers:
Send mail
Biography Blog Books for Readers Contact Home Kids MSW Info MSW's Books Online Classes Order Books MSW Online Resources for Writers Teens Workshops Writing Exercises
