October 28, 2021 - WV Author of the Month

Brooke County Libraries are proud to present one of West Virginia's best little known authors - Meredith Sue Willis! This October we are featuring work and life in the Mountain State.

Meredith Sue Willis, born and raised in West Virginia, is a novelist and teacher. She teaches novel writing at New York University's School of Professional Studies.

Her mother's family has lived in North Central West Virginia for several generations, and her father's family, from Appalachian Lee County, Virginia, followed jobs with Consolidation Coal Company through Virginia, Kentucky, and finally West Virginia.

Meredith Sue was educated in the public schools of Shinnston, West Virginia,where her father was her science teacher. Her mother was also trained as a teacher, and all four of her aunts and uncles on both sides of the family were teachers. Her Willis grandparents operated a country store in Wise County, Virginia, and her Meredith grandfather witnessed the Great Monongah, West Virginia, mine explosion of 1907, in which hundreds of miners were killed. Her Meredith grandmother was a mining camp midwife.

After attending Bucknell University for two years, MSW spent a year as a Volunteer in Service to America (VISTA) in Norfolk, Virginia. She fictionalized this experience in the second book of her Blair Morgan trilogy, Only Great Changes (Scribner's 1985; Hamilton Stone Editions, 1997).

After the year in VISTA, she transferred to Barnard College in New York City where she was involved in work against the Vietnam War as a member of the Students for a Democratic Society. She participated in the 1968 Columbia University anti-war sit-ins, fictionalized in Trespassers (Hamilton Stone Editions, 1997)

She graduated from Barnard College Phi Beta Kappa and Magna Cum Laude, and went to work as a so-called recreation therapist for a year at Bellevue Hospital. This job included calling a lot of bingo games and a newsletter for the long term patients in the vast, un-air-conditioned rehab wards of the old old Bellevue.

She then took a Master of Fine Arts degree from Columbia University, studying with Anthony Burgess, Lore Segal and others. The most important connection she made during her time at the Columbia School of the Arts was a program formed by Phillip Lopate at P.S. 75 that included Karen Hubert, Terry Mack, and others. This program, through Teachers & Writers Collaborative (see below for names of people in photo at left), was one of the earliest of the arts-in-education organizations.

At the end of the nineteen-seventies, MSW had her first novel accepted for publication: A Space Apart  (Scribner's, 1979) . It was followed by Higher Ground (Scribner's, 1981; Hamilton Stone Editions 1996) and Only Great Changes (Scribner's, 1985; Hamilton Stone Editions1997). The final book of the trilogy, Trespassers, was published by Hamilton Stone Editions in 1997.

MSW married Andrew B. Weinberger in 1982--only twelve years after they began living together, and their son Joel Howard Willis Weinberger was born in 1985, twenty years to the day after their first date.

Andy has just retired as a medical specialist in rheumatology, and Joel (a graduate of Columbia High School in Maplewood, New Jersey) is a Ph.d software engineer for Snap, Inc. in Los Angeles. He is married to Sarah Zakowski Weinberger, a specialist in the delivery of health care. They are the parents of Shira (four) and Eli (one and a quarter).

MSW has given many workshops and performances of her writing and won many prizes including fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. She has participated in the Circuit Writers program of the West Virginia Humanities Council and presented at many workshops and conferences.

Her writing about the Appalachian Region was the subject of the Fourteenth Annual Emory & Henry Literary Festival in Emory, Virginia, in 1995, and the proceedings of that festival were published in a special issue of The Iron Mountain Review. She was also the featured writer in the Fall, 2006 issue of Appalachian Heritage.

She received the Literary Award of the West Virginia Library Association and was the 1990 West Virginia Italian Heritage Festival Non-Italian Woman of the Year. In May 2004, she received an Honorary Doctorate in Humane Letters from West Virginia University.

Currently living in the City of Orange, New Jersey, near New York City, teaching at New York University's School of Professional Studies and working on her own writing, MSW is also the chair of the Social Action Committee of the Ethical Culture Society of Essex County and is co-chair of the Coalition on Race's Schools Committee.

In her spare time, she tries to support the Garden State by keeping a four season organic garden in her backyard.

 Images and info are courtesy of Google, Wikipedia, and author's web page.

Ms. Willis loves to blog and keep in touch with her readers and aspiring writers! Check out her webpage: Meredith Sue Willis Author and Teacher