Mississippi soil has always proven fertile for many homegrown goods. One most notable is the crop of prolific writers it has nurtured and sewn, and now two Oxford writers have been nominated for Edgar Allan Poe Awards for their works of fiction.
Megan Abbott’s short story “Oxford Girl,” featured in last year’s compendium release “Mississippi Noir,” and Susan Vaught’s junior novel “Things Too Huge to Fix by Saying Sorry” are nominated for the Mystery Writers of America’s 71st annual awards.
Abbott, a Detroiter by birth and a New Yorker for more than two decades, moved to Oxford in 2013 to become the Grisham writer in residence at the university. Even though she had visited friends like Ace Atkins and Jack Pendarvis here many times, she said she still had trouble situating herself to the South and its unique schedule.
“I did need to adjust to the quietness of Sundays in Oxford and the general realization that there’s no need to rush everywhere all the time. It was great for writing,” she said.
She still treasures her time in Mississippi for giving her both proximity to other writers and creators in the community and the distance she needed from the fast-paced world.
“I made so many friends while I was here, accumulated over many wonderful evenings spent at City Grocery Bar talking about books and movies, going to Snackbar for oysters, buying big stacks of novels at Square Books,” Abbott said.
When the Oxonian author, professor and editor of “Mississippi Noir,” Tom Franklin, asked Abbott to be a part of the mystery anthology, Abbott began to draw on her year in Oxford for inspiration, as well as some of her own collegiate experiences at the University of Michigan.
Abbott had long toyed with the idea of writing a story based on an old English murder ballad. After coming across one called “Oxford Girl,” she decided this was her chance to adapt English verse into Southern gothic.
“I wanted to do something big and grand and tragic in an unlikely setting: the world of fraternity and sorority parties, mixers, tailgating,” she said.
The narrative alternates between excerpts from the 1820s ballad and personal narration by a modern-day sorority girl and fraternity boy.
Abbott has been nominated four times for an Edgar Award and her novel “Queenpin” won her the 2008 award for best paperback original. Abbott is inspired and excited to be nominated in this year’s short story category along with names like Joyce Carol Oates and Stephen King she said, because she has struggled with short stories and feels like novels are more her suit.
“Stories are so different than novels,” she said. “They have to be precise and do so much in such a short space.”
Abbott is nominated this year for the Edgar Awards alongside her mother Patti Abbott. This is the first time a mother-daughter pair has been nominated in the same year, according to Edgar Allen Poe Awards publicist Kathy Daneman.
The awards are handed out by the Mystery Writers of America, whose mission, according to its website, is “promoting higher regard for crime writing and recognition and respect for those who write within the genre.”
The finalists for the Edgar Awards were announced on Jan. 19, Edgar Allan Poe’s 208th birthday, and the winners will be chosen at an awards ceremony in New York City on April 27. The contest features several categories such as best novel, best paperback original, best short story and best juvenile fiction, for which Susan Vaught’s novel is nominated.
Vaught, author of the young adult historical fiction novel “Things Too Huge to Fix by Saying Sorry,” was born in Oxford and spent the first five years of her life on Beanland Drive, as the child of two University of Mississippi faculty members. When she returned to the school for her bachelor’s degree, she lived in what she called the “new dorm” that stands today as Crosby Hall.
She holds fond memories of the town and summers with her grandmother on their farm, her apartment toward Holly Springs and her jobs at the Bonanza Steakhouse convenience store and the North Mississippi Regional Center.
Vaught had always wanted to set a novel in the LOU community as a way to bring forth her college memories and wanted to tackle some of the tension between past and present that she had experienced in her formative years within the town.
“When I had the idea of two older characters having a literary feud, I absolutely had to set the tale in Oxford,” Vaught said. “I have to admit, elements of Mississippi may creep into many of my pieces.”
Her first novel, a fantasy called “Stormwich,” takes place on the coast during Hurricane Camille. In 2016, she won her first Edgar award for another Mississippi novel, “Footer Davis Probably Is Crazy.” The middle novel is set in fictional Mississippi town named Bugtussle, which she said strangely resembled Corinth, where she was living in at the narrator’s age.
Vaught tackles several serious issues in “Things Too Huge,” such as the conflicted history of the University of Mississippi campus, William Faulkner and Alzheimer’s in a tender way designed to reach a young adult audience. She feels it is important to provide children with books about tense and serious situations because her readers are often thrust into them, like she was when she lost her father and uncle in her early youth to a tragic plane crash.
“I work through the characters’ personalities and ‘voices’ to create humor to offset the tougher elements, but I don’t shy away from the tougher things because I know many children need to know they aren’t the only kids going through hard things,” Vaught said.
Vaught researched carefully prior to writing the novel to fully understand its complex topics.
“I read extensively on the Meredith Riots – personal accounts, transcripts of the Kennedy-Barnett interactions and various novels discussing that period of civil unrest,” she said. “Given the dynamics in the book, I struggled to tell a story about appropriation without appropriating – relying on my own experiences and memories versus taking the experiences of others that I believe I have less moral right to put forth.”
She said she was also challenged to relearn the Ole Miss campus and had to “check herself” to account for changes since 1965-85 when she was a resident. She also consulted local ghost stories to add some superstition to the novel.
She has seen a response from young readers through her fans’ discussions of their love for their grandparents, as the protagonist struggles with her grandmother’s loss of memory.
“The issue of Alzheimer’s, too, seems very relevant to them, as many kids are dealing with losing people they value and adore to this terrible disease,” Vaught said.
She said she’s always been drawn to small towns and rural spaces, and she currently resides in a log house in western Kentucky. Her home, with its familiar rolling hills, varies from Oxford with more hardwood trees and “15 or so degrees of relief in the summer heat,” according to Vaught.
“The town where I live (now) is much smaller than Oxford – maybe more like the Oxford I knew in college,” she said. “To study in Mississippi, and especially at Ole Miss, is to walk in the footsteps of writing legends. Having examples like Welty and Faulkner and professors like Barry Hannah and Willie Morris and Evans Harrington inspired me not to give up and to focus on craft and to always, always reach for the literary option.”
