Patsy Sims

Patsy Sims grew up in Texas and Louisiana and has drawn from her Southern roots for much of her writing. She is the author of The Klan (Stein & Day, 1978); Cleveland Benjamin's Dead!: A Struggle for Dignity in Louisiana's Cane Country (Dutton, 1981; University of Georgia Press, 1994); and Can Somebody Shout Amen!: Inside the Tents and Tabernacles of American Revivalists (St. Martin's, 1988), named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. The Klan and Can Somebody Shout Amen were reissued by the University Press of Kentucky in 1996 and remain in print. Sims also co-wrote the narration for the award-winning documentary The Klan: A Legacy of Hate (Guggenheim Productions, 1982). She is the editor of Literary Nonfiction: Learning by Example (Oxford, 2001) and The Stories We Tell: Classic True Tales by America's Greatest Women Journalists (Sager, 2017). Her current project is a reported memoir about spending childhood summers on the Texas prison farm where her grandfather ran the cotton gin and he and her grandmother lived on the grounds.

Prior to writing books, she was a writer and editor for the New Orleans States-Item, The San Francisco Chronicle, and The Philadelphia Inquirer. Her work has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, Oxford American, and Texas Observer, among other publications. She has won numerous grants and awards for her writing. She directed the MFA in Nonfiction Program at Goucher College from 2001 and 2014 and has served as a writer-in-residence at such institutions as the University of California, San Diego, and Pacific Luther University in Tacoma, Washington.