This summer marks the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. For every Katrina story that’s been told, there are hundred’s of private triumphs and heartbreaks that will never be divulged.
Mississippi native, Margaret McMullan, witnessed this firsthand when she returned to find her family home in ruins. Despite the chaos and heartbreak around her, McMullan was moved by the acts of kindness she witnessed. Neighbor’s helping neighbors and strangers comforting each other in the midst of despair.
To capture the heroic efforts of her own town and similar small towns throughout the Gulf,McMullan wrote “Aftermath Lounge”, a Katrina novel about how tragedy has shaped the character of communities throughout the United States.
About Margaret McCullan:
A recipient of a 2010 NEA Fellowship in literature, a 2010 Fulbright at the University of Pécs in Pécs, Hungary, and the National Author Winner of the 2011 Eugene and Marilyn Glick Indiana Authors Award, Margaret McMullan is the author of six award-winning novels.
Her novels include Aftermath Lounge, In My Mother’s House, a Pen/Faulkner nominee; Cashay, a Chicago Public Library 2009 Teen Book Selection; and When I Crossed No-Bob, a 2008 Parents’ Choice Silver Honor, a 2007 School Library Journal Best Book, an American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults, a Booklist 2009 Best Book For Young Adults, and a 2011 Mississippi Center for the Book selection at the National Book Festival in Washington, D.C. Both When I Crossed No-Bob and How I Found the Strong won the Mississippi Arts and Letters Award for Best Fiction (in 2004 and 2008), the Indiana Best Young Adult Book (in 2005 and 2008), and they are both New York Public Library A-List Books for Teens. How I Found the Strong was also named an American Library Association 2005 Notable Social Studies Book, and a Booklist’s Top Ten First Novel for Youth. Sources of Light is an American Library Association 2011 Best Book for Young Adults, a Best 2011 Book of Indiana, and a Chicago Public Library Teen Selection. Margaret’s latest book is the anthology Every Father’s Daughter, a collection of essays about fathers with an introduction by Phillip Lopate.
Margaret’s short stories and essays have appeared in the Chicago Tribune, Ploughshares, Southern Accents, TriQuarterly, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Greensboro Review, Other Voices, Boulevard, The Arkansas Review, The Montréal Review, National Geographic for Kids, The Southern California Anthology, Southern Accents, and The Sun among several other journals and anthologies such as Christmas Stories from the South’s Best Writers. A 2007 Eudora Welty Visiting Writer at Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi, Margaret has taught on the summer faculty at the Stony Brook Southampton Writers Conference in Southampton, New York, at the Eastern Kentucky University Low-Residency MFA Program, and at the University of Southern Indiana’s Summer and Winter Ropewalk Writers Retreat. She currently teaches at the University of Evansville in Evansville, Indiana, where she is Professor and Melvin M. Peterson Endowed Chair in Literature and Writing.
Visit Margaret McMullan for more information.
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