LEIGH ALLISON WILSON

(October 23, 1957–)

Short story author Leigh Allison Wilson is a native of Rogersville, Tennessee. She earned a B.A., magna cum laude, from Williams College in 1979 and did graduate work at the University of Virginia from 1979 to 1981. In 1983, Wilson received an M.F.A., with honors, from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her first book, a collection of short stories, From the Bottom Up, was awarded the first annual Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction from the University of Georgia Press in 1983.

Wilson's work, which is frequently set in the mountains of East Tennessee, features characters who are endearingly eccentric. Noted one reviewer, “She records not only absurd behavior but the stubborn craziness baked into rural personalities.”

Wilson says, “I've recently realized how very much I owe my sense of storytelling and humor to the Appalachian women who raised and nurtured me. I had thought I created my sensibilities and wit out of my own cloth, but now I realize I owe much of it to my family, particularly their ready grasp of narrative and humor.”

Responding to critics who insist on labeling Appalachian literature as “regional,” Wilson says, “All American fiction, it seems to me, is circumscribed by place; I have the feeling my work ends up being labeled regional simply because fewer people come from my particular place.”

The following scene from the short story “The Raising” is from Wilson's collection, From the Bottom Up.

OTHER SOURCES TO EXPLORE

PRIMARY

Short stories: Wind: Stories (1989), From the Bottom Up (1983).

SECONDARY

Contemporary Authors, Vol. 117, 487–88. Southern Women's Writing (1995).