MEREDITH SUE WILLIS

(May 31, 1946–)

Born in Clarksburg, West Virginia, Meredith Sue Willis spent her youth in the coal-mining town of Shinnston, West Virginia, where the residents, she explains, “were as likely to be Italian or Spanish or Lebanese as Scotch-Irish.” She has become an articulate, outspoken voice against homogeneous portrayals of Appalachian people.

Her maternal grandmother, Pearl Barnhardt Meredith, was a mining-camp midwife, and her maternal grandfather, Carl Meredith, was a coal miner. Her paternal grandparents tended coal company stores in Coeburn, Virginia; Burdine and Jenkins, Kentucky; and Owings, West Virginia. “This tendency to associate moving on with bettering yourself seems to be a part of my particular family heritage,” she admits, but “it is only one aspect of Appalachia” that “ties us to other immigrants.”

Her father worked in the mines between college semesters, and both of her parents became teachers. An accomplished teacher herself, Willis is author of three useful and popular books about the writing process, all published by the Teachers and Writers Collaborative Press.

After graduating from Shinnston High School and spending two years at Bucknell University, Willis dropped out to spend a life-altering year as a Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA) worker in Norfolk, Virginia, before graduating from Barnard with a B.A. in 1969 and completing an M.F.A. at Columbia in 1972, where she spent her time studying, writing, and protesting the Vietnam War.

She and her husband, Andrew Weinberger, live with their son in South Orange, New Jersey. In Contemporary Authors she explained, “I have done a lot of odd jobs in my life and I value these very highly. I have worked with wheelchair patients, been a disc jockey for a college radio station, and given workshops for teachers and students of all ages in video tape and acting as well as creative writing…I have worked in a recycling center, and written painstaking letters in Spanish to dictators and other unsavory characters for Amnesty International. I like seeing everything—teaching, childhood, books I've read, jobs I've had, come together in fiction.”

Willis's first novel focuses on the family of a West Virginia preacher; her second introduces Blair Ellen Morgan, a character who rebels against the values of her West Virginia schoolteacher parents. In Only Great Changes, Willis continues the story of Blair Ellen Morgan, whose experiences echo Willis's own, as her fictional character travels from a small Baptist college in West Virginia to become a VISTA worker in a black neighborhood in Norfolk.

In the Mountains of America, a collection of eleven stories set in West Virginia, celebrates the art of storytelling. In “My Boy Elroy,” a young female narrates her experience and her grandmother's, achieving a memorable balance of empathy and understanding.

OTHER SOURCES TO EXPLORE

PRIMARY

Fiction: Oradell at Sea (2002), Trespassers (1997), In the Mountains of America (1994), Quilt Pieces, with Jane Wilson Joyce (1991), Only Great Changes (1985), Higher Ground (1981), Space Apart (1979). Books for children: Marco's Monster (1996), The Secret Super Powers of Marco (1994). Nonfiction: Deep Revision: A Guide for Teachers, Students, and Other Writers (1993). “Writing Out of the Region,” Appalachian Journal 18:3 (spring 1991), 296–301. Blazing Pencils: A Guide to Writing Fiction and Essays (1990). Personal Fiction Writing: A Guide to Writing from Real Life for Teachers, Students, and Writers (1984). Autobiographical essay: “An Inquiry into Who My Grandmother Really Was,” in Bloodroot (1998), ed. Joyce Dyer, 289–97.

SECONDARY

Thomas E. Douglass, “Meredith Sue Willis” [Interview], Appalachian Journal 20 (1993), 284–93. Gina Herring, “Politics and Men: What's ‘Really Important’ about Meredith Sue Willis and Blair Ellen Morgan,” Appalachian Journal 25:4 (summer 1998), 414–22. Nancy Carol Joyner, “The Poetics of the House in Appalachian Fiction,” The Poetics of Appalachian Space (1991), ed. Parks Lanier Jr., 17–20. “Meredith Sue Willis Issue,” Iron Mountain Review, 12 (spring 1996). Ken Sullivan, “Gradual Changes: Meredith Sue Willis and the New Appalachian Fiction,” Appalachian Journal 14 (1986), 38–45.