JOHN GREGORY BROWN
P.O. Box BB
Sweet Briar, VA 24595
brown@sbc.edu
EDUCATION
Johns Hopkins University M.A. in the Writing Seminars,1988
Louisiana State University M.A. in English,1984 Phi Kappa Phi
Tulane University B.A. in English,1982 Phi Beta Kappa
EMPLOYMENT
Sweet Briar College 1994 - present
Director of Creative Writing,
Julia Jackson Nichols Professor of
English and Creative Writing
Courses: Fiction Workshop, Advanced Fiction Workshop, Introduction to Creative
Writing, World Writers, Biographical Fiction
Johns Hopkins University 1993 - 1994
Instructor in the Writing Seminars
Courses: Graduate Fiction Workshops
Goucher College 1993
Visiting Assistant Professor
Course: Fiction Workshop
Patuxent Publishing Co. 1989 -1993
Staff Writer-News Editor for Columbia Flier/Howard County Times
Johns Hopkins University 1988 -1989
Instructor in the Writing Seminars
Courses: Rudiments of Fiction
1987 -1988
Teaching Fellow
Courses: Contemporary American Letters
North Carolina State 1984 -1987
University Lecturer in English
Courses: Introduction to Fiction; Composition
PUBLICATIONS
Books
Audubon's Watch. Novel. Houghton Mifflin Co., September, 2001. (Paperback edition: Houghton Mifflin (Mariner Books): October, 2002.
The Wrecked, Blessed Body of Shelton Lafleur. Novel.
Houghton Mifflin Co., April, 1996. (British edition: Hodder & Stoughton,
July 1996. Paperback edition: Avon Books, March 1997. Large-print edition: Thorndike
Press, July 1997). Reissued paperback edition:Houghton Mifflin Co., September,
2001.
Decorations in a Ruined Cemetery. Novel. Houghton
Mifflin Co., January, 1994.
(British edition: Hodder & Stoughton, July 1995. Paperback edition: Avon
Books, January 1995 Large-print edition: Thorndike Press, May 1994).
Short Stories and Novel Excerpts
“Audubon’s Watch,” Louisiana Cultural Vistas. New Orleans,
LA. Winter 2001-2002.
“Laps,” Shenandoah. Spring, 1998.
“The Great Sea,” Louisiana Cultural Vistas. New Orleans, LA. Spring,
1996.
“The Fallen Bridge,” Louisiana Cultural Vistas. New Orleans, LA.
Fall, 1994.
"This Summer," The Sun. Durham, NC. July, 1993.
"The Mower," Village Advocate. Chapel Hill, NC. June 23, 1985.
Scripts
The Road Home, Episode Five. CBS. 1994.
Book Reviews
“A Tale of Love and Intolerance,” Chicago Tribune, July 8, 2001.
Review of Bart Schneider’s Secret Love.
“Separate and Unequeal,” Chicago Tribune, February 11, 2001. Review
of Rilla Askew’s Beulah Land and Kathleen Cambor’s In Sunlight,
In A Beautiful Garden.
“Simple Truths: A Convincing and Charming Portrait of a Young Boy’s
Life,” Chicago Tribune, May 28, 2000. Review of Tony Earley’s Jim
the Boy.
“A Young Girl’s Troubled, Twisting Journey to Adulthood,”
Chicago Tribune, September 12, 1999. Review of Elizabeth Graver’s The
Honey Thief.
“A Sheltered Life,” Chicago Tribune, January 3, 1999. Review of
Eudora Welty: Complete Novels; Eudora Welty: Stories, Essays, & Memoir;
and Ann Waldron’s Eudora: A Writer’s Life.
“Two Families Search for A Way Out of Despair,” Chicago Tribune,
August 30, 1998. Review of John Burnham Schwartz’s Reservation Road.
“Dividing Line,” Chicago Tribune, December 14, 1997. Review of David
K. Shipler’s A Country of Strangers: Blacks and Whites in America.
“Exploring Our Paradoxical Need for Separation and Connection,”
Chicago Tribune, November 16, 1997. Review of J.M. Coetzee’s Boyhood:
Scenes from Provincial Life.
“Formula for Success,” Chicago Tribune, November 2, 1997. Review
of Caleb Carr’s The Angel of Darkness.
Book Reviews (continued)“An Honest Portrait of the Joys and Pains of Romance,”
Chicago Tribune, October 12, 1997. Review of Nicholas Delbanco’s Old Scores.
“Grand ‘Plan,’” Chicago Tribune, September 28, 1997.
Review of Lawrence Naumoff’s A Plan for Women.
“Yesterday’s Adolescent,” Chicago Tribune, September 7, 1997.
Review of Elizabeth Graver’s Unravelling.
“Search for Identity,” Chicago Tribune, July 27, 1997. Review of
Chris Offutt’s The Good Brother.
“Bradford Morrow’s Rocky Mountain Gothic Mystery,” Chicago
Tribune, March 9, 1997. Review of Bradford Morrow’s Giovanni’s Gift.
“Men Behaving Badly,” Chicago Tribune, February 16, 1997. Review
of Donald Antrim’s The Hundred Brothers and Stephen Dixon’s Gould.
“Melancholy Magic,” Chicago Tribune, December 14, 1996. Review of
Philip Graham’s Interior Design..
“Race and Transformation,” Chicago Tribune. October 27, 1996. Review
of Osha Gray Davidson’s The Best of Enemies: Race and Redemption in the
New South and Jane Lazaar’s Beyond the Whiteness of Whiteness: Memoir
of a White Mother of Black Sons.
“Taking the Measure of His Soul,” Los Angeles Times, March 17, 1996.
Review of Albert Murray’s The Seven-League Boots.
“An Unmetaphoric Illness,” Los Angeles Times, July 16, 1995. Review
of Reynolds Price’s The Promise of Rest..
Non-Fiction
“Other Bodies, Ourselves: The Mask of Fiction,” Essay in Creating
Fiction, Story Press, 1999. Edited by Julie Checkoway.
“Master of Contradiction,” Chicago Tribune, Sunday, October 25,
1998. Essay on Portugese Nobel Laureate José Saramago.
“In the art of fiction, it’s a challenge to make reality ring true,”
The Boston Globe, July 13, 1997. Essay on biographical fiction.
Numerous news and feature articles, essays, book reviews, and columns in the
Columbia Flier, the Howard County Times, the Laurel Leader, the Raleigh News
& Observer, Southern Changes, Spectator Magazine.
AWARDS
Louisiana Endowment for The Humanities 2002 Book of the Year for Audubon’s
Watch.
George A. And Eliza Gardner Howard Foundation Fellowship, 1998-1999.
Steinbeck Award for Decorations in a Ruined Cemetery, 1996, U.K.
Awarded for the best novel of the year published in the United Kingdom by a
writer under forty years old.
Regional Winner -- Granta magazine Best Young American Novelists competition,
1996.
The Lillian Smith Book Award for Decorations in a Ruined Cemetery, 1994.
Awarded by the Southern Regional Council for the year’s best work of fiction
about the South.
Lyndhurst Prize, 1993. Three-year fellowship from The Lyndhurst Foundation.READINGS
Washington and Lee University, University of Georgia, The American University,
Tulane University, Loyola University, McNeese State University, Johns Hopkins
University, North Carolina State University, The Seven Hills School (Cincinnati,
Ohio), Howard County (Maryland) Poetry and Literature Society, Sweet Briar College,
J. Sergeant Reynolds Community College, Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary
Festival, Vero Beach (Florida) Center for the Arts, University of Richmond,
Eudora Welty Festival (Jackson, Mississippi), Columbia Festival of the Arts,
Virginia Festival of the Book, and readings throughout the United States while
on book tour.
PROFESSIONAL ORGANIZATIONS
Associated Writing Programs
Authors Guild
American Association of University Professors
National Book Critics Circle
Screenwriters Guild of America (inactive)
REVIEWS
Reviews of my novels have appeared in the following newspapers and magazines:
New York Times, New York Times Book Review, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times,
Washington Post, Washington Times, Detroit Free Press, Boston Globe, The London
Times, The Daily Telegraph, New Statesman and Society, Newsday, New York Magazine,
The Wall Street Journal, Southern Living, The Times Literary Supplement, Baltimore
Sun, San Francisco Chronicle, Houston Post, New Orleans Times-Picayune, Charlotte
Observer, Atlanta Journal Constitution, Richmond Times-Dispatch, Virginian Pilot
and Ledger-Star, Dallas Morning News, Orlando Sentinel, Memphis Commercial Appeal,
Roanoke Times & World News, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Toledo Blade, Jackson
Clarion-Ledger, Austin American-Statesman, Asheville Citizen-Times, Milwaukee
Journal Sentinel, Albany Times-Union, Greensboro News & Record, Santa Fe
New Mexican, St. Petersburg Times, Cincinatti Enquirer, Dayton Daily News, Hartford
Courant, Seattle Times, Publishers Weekly, Booklist, Library Journal, Kirkus
Reviews, The Hudson Review, The Southern Review, Tulanian, The Southern QuarterlyPERSONAL
Married to the writer Carrie Brown. Three children: Olivia, Molly, Walker