Gilchrist Honored Twice for Writing

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. - Renowned writer and University of Arkansas associate professor of creative writing Ellen Gilchrist has two new honors to add to her long list of accomplishments.

Gilchrist was recently awarded the Thomas Wolfe Award on behalf of the English department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the Thomas Wolfe Society. She will travel to UNC in October to receive the award, which recognizes her contributions to Southern literature.

The Thomas Wolfe Society, affiliated with UNC, encourages study of and interest in Thomas Wolfe’s work and career. Each year the society recognizes a contemporary writer of significant accomplishment in honor of the late American novelist Thomas Wolfe. Previous winners have included authors Larry Brown, Elizabeth Spencer, Pat Conroy and Tom Wolfe.

Gilchrist has also been chosen as the Andrew W. Mellon Fellow at Tulane University. She will be serving there as Mellon Chair for the spring semester of the 2005 academic year, and will be responsible for organizing the Mellon Symposium.

"I’m very honored," she said.

Donald Hays, director of the creative writing program and associate professor of English, said the department is proud of Gilchrist for her latest accomplishments.

"Both of these are big awards," he said. "We’re really pleased for Ellen and for the program."

Gilchrist received a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Millsaps College in 1967. Her writing career began when she won a poetry award at the University of Arkansas in 1976. She won the Craft in Poetry award from the New York Quarterly in 1978 and published her first book, "The Land Surveyor’s Daughter," in 1979 through Lost Roads Press.

Gilchrist’s first book, "In the Land of Dreamy Dreams," was published by the University of Arkansas Press in 1981. She now has two volumes of poetry and 19 fiction titles to her name, and has received a number of awards, including the prestigious National Book Award for "Victory Over Japan" in 1984.

Gilchrist will have a book of creative nonfiction coming out in spring 2005. "Things Like the Truth," a series of essays about writing and the process of learning to teach writing, will be published by University Press of Mississippi.

The title of the book comes from a quote by the great 17th century dramatist, poet, and wit Ben Jonson:

"He is called a poet, not he who writeth in measure only, but he who fayneth and formeth a fable and writes things like the truth."

Parts of the book will be based on Gilchrist’s experiences teaching at the University of Arkansas since 2000.

"That’s the only place I’ve been learning to teach," Gilchrist said. "I’ve had great teachers. it’s been both exciting and difficult."

Gilchrist has read her work at colleges and universities all over the United States. She also broadcast commentaries on "Morning Edition" on National Public Radio for about three years in the 1980s.