John Gregory Brown is the author of the novels Decorations in a Ruined Cemetery; The Wrecked, Blessed Body of Shelton Lafleur; Audubon’s Watch; and A Thousand Miles from Nowhere. His honors include a Lyndhurst Prize, the Lillian Smith Award, the John Steinbeck Award, a Howard Foundation fellowship, the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities Book of the Year Award and most recently, the Emyl Jenkins Sexton Literary Award for Fiction from the Library of Virginia.
Courses Taught
Varieties of the Fantastic in Fiction, Art & Identity in New Orleans, Contemporary International Writers, Fact Into Fiction: The Writer As Explorer, The Writer Abroad, Senior Portfolio Seminar, Introduction to the Literary Studio, The Mindful Writer
Publications
Books
A Thousand Miles from Nowhere. Novel. Lee Boudreaux Books. Little, Brown and Co., 2016.
Audubon’s Watch. Novel. Houghton Mifflin Co., September, 2001.
The Wrecked, Blessed Body of Shelton Lafleur. Novel. Houghton Mifflin Co., April, 1996.
Decorations in A Ruined Cemetery. Novel. Houghton Mifflin Co., January, 1994. Reissued with a new introduction. University of South Carolina Press, 2019.
Essays
“The Clash’s London Calling,” Essay in RS500: Telling Stories in Stereo. July 2019. Link here.
“Elvis Presley’s Elvis Presley,” Essay in RS500: Telling Stories in Stereo. January 2018. Link here.
“Cat Stevens’ Tea for the Tillerman,” Essay in RS500: Telling Stories in Stereo. July 2017. Link here.
“Walk Me!” Essay in Garden & Gun. December 2016/ January 2017. Link here.
“Bob Dylan’s Time Out of Mind,” Essay in RS500: Telling Stories in Stereo. 2016. Link here.
“Losing My New Orleans,” Essay on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition. September 5, 2005. Link here.
“Other Bodies, Ourselves: The Mask of Fiction,” Essay in Creating Fiction, Story Press, 1999. Edited by Julie Checkoway.
“Master of Contradiction,” Chicago Tribune, Sunday, October 25, 1998. Essay on Portuguese Nobel Laureate José Saramago.
“In the art of fiction, it’s a challenge to make reality ring true,” The Boston Globe, July 13, 1997. Essay on biographical fiction.
Born and raised in New Orleans, John Gregory Brown is the author of the novels Decorations in a Ruined Cemetery; The Wrecked, Blessed Body of Shelton Lafleur; Audubon’s Watch; and A Thousand Miles from Nowhere. His honors include a Lyndhurst Prize, the Lillian Smith Award, the John Steinbeck Award, a Howard Foundation fellowship, the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities Book of the Year Award, and the Library of Virginia Book Award.
His visual art has been displayed in individual and group exhibitions and has appeared online and in print in Hayden’s Ferry Review, the New England Review, Flock, Gulf Stream, and elsewhere.
He is the Julia Jackson Nichols Professor of English at Sweet Briar College in Virginia, where he lives with his wife, the novelist Carrie Brown.
For more information, please visit my personal website.