On this day in Alabama history: Author Mary Ward Brown was born in Hamburg
Author Mary Ward Brown (1917-2013), a native of Hamburg in Perry County, was acclaimed for her short stories. Her collection "Tongues of Flame" brought her to national attention in 1986. Her work centers on the changing cultural landscape of the South from the 1950s through 1970s. (Encyclopedia of Alabama, Photograph by Jerry Siegel)
June 18, 1917
Author Mary Ward Brown was born in Hamburg. Brown is best known for creating modern short fiction that presents an honest representation of conflicts in Southern culture and the theme of persistent racism. She published two collections of short stories – “Tongues of Flame” in 1986 and “It Wasn’t All Dancing” in 2002 – to a bevy of awards, including two Alabama Author Awards, the Lillian Smith Book Award, the Harper Lee Award and the Hillsdale Fiction Prize. She published her memoir, “Fanning the Spark,” in 2009. Brown was inducted into the Alabama Women’s Hall of Fame in 2017.
Read more at Encyclopedia of Alabama.
Mary Ward Brown’s short-story collection Tongues of Flame received an award from the Hemingway Foundation in 1986, the year it was published. She was honored with the 2002 Harper Lee Award for Alabama’s Distinguished Writer and the 2003 Hillsdale Prize for Fiction. (Encyclopedia of Alabama, Photograph by Jerry Siegel)
For more on Alabama’s Bicentennial, visit Alabama 200.
