James Alan McPherson Biographical Note & Bibliography

James Alan McPherson

September 16, 1943—July 27, 2016

Photograph courtesy of University of Iowa Foundation

James Alan McPherson was born on September 16, 1943, in Savannah, Georgia, the second of four children. His father, James, Sr., was a master electrician; his mother, Mabel Small, was a domestic.

After high school graduation he enrolled at Morris Brown College for his freshman year, attended Morgan State University for two years before returning to Morris Brown for his undergraduate degree in history and English in 1965. In 1968 McPherson received his LLB. degree from Harvard Law School. Three years later he received his MFA degree in creative writing from the University of Iowa. By this time he had decided not to practice law, though he would apply his legal education in his writing. “On Becoming an American Writer” (nonfiction) and the short story “A Sense of Story” can serve as just two affecting examples.

He taught at the University of Santa Cruz (assistant professor, 1969–1971), Morgan State University (assistant professor, 1975–1976), and the University of Virginia (associate professor, 1976–1981) before returning to the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 1981. Teaching and visiting stints included Yale Law School (1978–1979), Stanford University’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (1997–1998), and Meiji University and Chiba University, Japan. The visits to Japan provided the essential platforms for his insights on region and relationships in his memoir, Crabcakes.

In 1972, McPherson was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1978 for Elbow Room, his short story collection. He was recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship in 1981, a member of the first group to be selected for that prestigious award. In 1995, McPherson was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His short story “Gold Coast” was selected in 2000 for Best American Short Stories of the Century by John Updike.

James Alan McPherson died on July 27, 2016, in Iowa City, Iowa. He is survived by his daughter Rachel (born during his first marriage to the former Sarah Charlton); a son, Benjamin Miyamoto; a sister; and a brother. He was Professor Emeritus at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and Department of English.

FICTION

• Hue and Cry: Stories. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1969.

• Elbow Room: Stories. New York: Atlantic-Little, Brown, 1977.

• “Reflections of Titus Basfield.” Harper’s (June 2000). Excerpt from a novel chapter.

NONFICTION

• Railroad: Trains and Train People in American Culture. Edited with Miller Williams. New York: Random House, 1976.

• McPherson’s contributions:

• “Some Observations on the Railroad and American Culture”

• “The Story of the Underground Railroad”

• “The Unknown Bandits: Evans and Sontag”

• “Plessy v. Ferguson—Our Constitution is Color-blind”

• Confronting Racial Difference. Edited with DeWitt Henry. Ploughshares 16.2/3 (1990).

• Crabcakes: A Memoir. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998.

• Fathering Daughters: Reflections by Men. Edited with DeWitt Henry. Boston: Beacon Press, 1998.

• A Region Not Home: Reflections on Exile. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000.

SELECTED UNCOLLECTED NONFICTION

• “All Mighty Blackstone and What Does It Mean?, Part 1.” Atlantic 223:5 (1969).

• “Part 2.” Atlantic 223:6 (1969).

• “The Black Law Student.” Atlantic 225:4 (1970).

• “Indivisible Man.” Atlantic 226:6 (1970). Masterful essay on Ralph Ellison.

• “In My Father’s House There Are Many Mansions and I’m Going to Get Me Some of Them, Too.” Atlantic 229:4 (1972).

• “View from the Chinaberry Tree.” Atlantic 234:6 (1974). Commentary on works by Albert Murray.

• “To Blacks and Jews: Hab Rachmones.” Tikkun 4:5 (1989).

• Review of Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro. Ploughshares 16:4 (1990/91).

• “Ivy Day in the Empty Room.” Iowa Review 23:3 (1993).

• “Listening to the Lower Frequencies.” World Literature Today 68:3 (1994). A meditation on the life and career of Ralph Ellison.

• “A Useful Demonstration of the Etiquette Necessary for Survival on the Secondary Roads Trailing off the Interstates during Times of Lapses in Essential Areas of Civil Responsibility, Late Summer 1983.” Doubletake 1:2 (1995).

• “Letters on a Japanese Handscroll.” Doubletake 3:4 (1997).

• “Umbilicus.” Doubletake...