About White People

Author: Allan Gurganus

Published: 1990

Honors: White People was awarded the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction in 1992 as well as the Southern Book Award. The book was also a nominee for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction in 1992.

This award-winning collection of 11 short stories and novellas — by the author of the highly acclaimed Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All — explores the American human experience—black and white, gay and straight, young and old, and especially Southern. Author Allan Gurganus gives heartbreaking and hilarious voice to the fears, desires and triumphs of a grand cast of Americans.

Here are war heroes bewildered by the complex negotiations of family life, former debutantes called upon to muster resources they never knew they had, vacationing senior citizens confronted by their own bravery, and married men brought up short by the marvelous possibilities of entirely different lives. Written with flair, wit, and deep humanity, this award-winning volume confirms Allan Gurganus as one of the finest writers of our time.

About the Author:
Allan Gurganus, the novelist and short story writer, has been called "the worthy heir to Faulkner and Welty." Born in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, in 1947, Gurganus was trained as a painter. His oils and water-colors are represented in many public and private collections including the North Carolina Museum of Art and the Rocky Mount Arts Center. His first one man show was held at the Arts Center when he was twelve. He has illustrated his works of fiction.

Gurganus is the author of the Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All which won the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. White People, his collection of stories and novellas set in the fictitious Falls, NC of Widow, was a Pen-Faulkner finalist and was awarded the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. His novel, Plays Well With Others, was nominated for the Lambda Literary Award. The Times Literary Supplement: called it, "the best work of fiction ever written about AIDs, and certainly the funniest." The title story of Gurganus' fourth book, The Practical Heart, was first printed in Harper's magazine, and was a recipient of the National Magazine Prize.

Gurganus has taught writing and literature at Stanford, Duke, the Iowa Writer's Workshop, and Sarah Lawrence College. His short fiction is seen in the O'Henry Prize Collection, Best American Stories and The Norton Anthology of American Literature.

Guranus has been inducted into the fellowship of Southern Writers and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The CBS version of Widow won four Emmy Awards, including Best Supporting Actress for Cecily Tyson as the freed slave, Castalia Marsden. Peter Bogdonovich adapted "Blessed Assurance," from White People, for film, also starring Cecily Tyson.

Gurganus' work against censorship and homophobia have led him to forums like The News Hour with Jim Leher. His political editorials are often seen in the op-ed pages of the New York Times.

His next novel, second in the Falls Trilogy that began with Widow, will be The Erotic History of a Southern Baptist Church. As widely read abroad as in his native country, Gurganus's work has been translated into twelve languages. His mentor, John Cheever, wrote: "I consider Allan Gurganus the most technically gifted and morally responsive writer of his generation."