Ellen Gilchrist
A writer of poems, short stories, novels, and nonfiction commentaries, Ellen Gilchrist is a diverse writer whom critics have praised repeatedly for her subtle perceptions, unique characters, and sure command of the writer’s voice, as well as her innovative plotlines set in her native Mississippi.
As Sabine Durrant commented in the London Times, her writing “swings between the familiar and the shocking, the everyday and the traumatic.... She writes about ordinary happenings in out of the way places, of meetings between recognizable characters from her other fiction and strangers, above all of domestic routine disrupted by violence.” The world of her fiction is awry; the surprise ending, although characteristic of her works, can still shock the reader. “It is disorienting stuff,” noted Durrant, “but controlled always by Gilchrist’s wry tone and gentle insight.”
She earned her B.A. from Millsaps College in 1967, and later did postgraduate study at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville.
She has worked as an author and journalist, as a contributing editor for the Vieux Carre Courier from 1976-1979, and as a commentator on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition from 1984-1985. Her NPR commentaries have been published in her book Falling Through Space.
She won a National Book Award for her 1984 collection of short stories, Victory Over Japan.
“نقش: كل ما عليك عمله لتعليم طفل هو أن تعلمه القراءة وتتركه ، أي شئ غير ذلك فهو غسيل مخ …!!(إيلين جيلكرست)All you have to do to educate a child is leave them alone and teach them to read. The rest is brainwashing.”
“All you have to do to educate a child is leave him alone and teach him to read. The rest is brainwashing.”
“One thing I know is that it is a bad idea to marry someone who had bad parents. If they hated their mother, if they were hated by their mother or father, your marriage will pay for it in ways both obvious and subtle. When the chips are down, when someone is sick or loses their job or gets scared, the old patterns will kick in and he will treat you the way he treated his mother or the way she treated him.”
“That's great," Katie said. "Actually, it's revolutionary. If you can work and be in love at the same time, you're the first woman I ever knew that could. Maybe you're the missing link, Amanda."Maybe you ought to get a job for the 'Ladies Home Journal.' They like simplistic shit like that.”
“Once a man I was leaving told me I could go if I would leave my skin behind. I was so young I didn't even know that I was wonderful..”
“Everything in the world had happened to them and kept on happening. They didn't care. They liked it that way.”