Minrose Gwin is a writer, editor, scholar, and educator. Her most recent books are a novel, The Queen of Palmyra (HarperCollins/Harper Perennial) and a memoir, Wishing For Snow (LSU Press). She teaches contemporary fiction at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and creative writing workshops at the University of New Mexico Taos Writers Conference.
The Queen of Palmyra
by Minrose Gwin
published by HarperCollins
release date: April 27th, 2010
A Barnes & Noble "Discover" pick and an Indiebound Notable Book
You may pre-order the book from Barnes and Noble, Amazon, HarperCollins, and your local independent bookstore.
“The most powerful and also the most lyrical novel about race, racism, and denial in the American South since To Kill a Mockingbird.”
— Lee Smith, author of On Agate Hill
On the eve of the 50th anniversary of To Kill a Mockingbird comes The Queen of Palmyra, a spellbinding debut novel about a young girl in Civil Rights-era Mississippi – and the horrors she witnesses one hot summer.
Author Minrose Gwin knows of what she’s writing. Gwin says there are a number of Southerners like “Florence,” the young narrator of her novel, who witnessed horrendous crimes during the Civil Rights years, and have only come forward in the past couple of decades to testify about these crimes. Gwin says: “In most cases, these belated witnesses felt enormously threatened during the sixties when these acts of violence were committed and so just recently have felt they could speak. … So the question of justice, of how one can close one’s eyes when fear is involved … drove me to create Florence Forrest.”
Click here to read more...
— Lee Smith, author of On Agate Hill
On the eve of the 50th anniversary of To Kill a Mockingbird comes The Queen of Palmyra, a spellbinding debut novel about a young girl in Civil Rights-era Mississippi – and the horrors she witnesses one hot summer.
Author Minrose Gwin knows of what she’s writing. Gwin says there are a number of Southerners like “Florence,” the young narrator of her novel, who witnessed horrendous crimes during the Civil Rights years, and have only come forward in the past couple of decades to testify about these crimes. Gwin says: “In most cases, these belated witnesses felt enormously threatened during the sixties when these acts of violence were committed and so just recently have felt they could speak. … So the question of justice, of how one can close one’s eyes when fear is involved … drove me to create Florence Forrest.”
Click here to read more...