Minrose Gwin

Like the characters in her latest novel, Promise, Minrose Gwin is a native of Tupelo, Mississippi. She grew up hearing wild stories about the devastating Tupelo tornado of 1936--flying babies, dehorned cows, people dangling in bare-limbed trees--all of which would find their way into Promise, a novel that unearths the deeper devastation of racial injustice. Gwin began her writing career as a newspaper and wire service reporter in cities throughout the southeast. Her civil rights-era novel, The Queen of Palmyra, was a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers pick, a finalist for the John Gardner Fiction Book Award, and a Women’s National Book Association Great Group Reads selection. Her memoir, Wishing for Snow, tells the story of her mother’s descent into mental illness.

Wearing another hat, Gwin is also a teacher, author of cultural studies books, and editor, focusing on issues of social justice. In Remembering Medgar Evers: Writing the Long Civil Rights Movement, she writes of the reverberating impact of this lesser-known Civil Rights leader’s martyrdom. She is also a coeditor of The Literature of the American South. Gwin has taught as a professor at universities across the country, most recently the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She currently lives in Chapel Hill and Albuquerque, New Mexico.