Ellen Douglas

Biography

Douglas was born in New Orleans, Louisiana and grew up in Hope, Arkansas, and Alexandria, Louisiana. She graduated from the University of Mississippi in 1942 and later settled in Greenville, Mississippi with her husband Kenneth Haxton. She had three sons with Haxton: Richard, Ayres, and Brooks Haxton, the latter a notable, award-winning poet and writer.

Douglas taught writing at Ole' Miss, where she was writer-in-residence from 1979 to 1983.

She adopted the pen name Ellen Douglas before the publication of A Family’s Affairs to protect the privacy of two aunts, on whose lives she had based much of the plot.

Douglas died of heart failure at the age of 91 on November 7, 2012. A Family's Affairs was awarded the Houghton Mifflin fellowship in 1961 and was recognized as one of the five best novels of the year by The New York Times. Black Cloud, White Cloud was named one of the five best works of fiction by The New York Times in 1963. Apostles of Light was nominated in 1973 for the National Book Award by the National Book Committee. Awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship in 1976 Twice a recipient of a Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award for literature in 1979 and 1983. Recognized as the first recipient of the Hillsdale Prize for Fiction from the Fellowship of Southern Writers