10s of Oxford: Following Your Path in Writing

10s of Oxford this week excel at writing. We want to show our love to people who describe and curate the beauty in our world.

Sarah Frances Hardy

She is a local artist who realized her dream of creating children’s books. Hardy had her first book Puzzled by Pink published in 2012. The book is a story of two sister with opposite personalities: a Wednesday Adams vs. Fancy Nancy. That book is a byproduct of Hardy’s determination through piles of rejection slips of her manuscripts.

“I told people that I could wallpaper my den in them,” she said to Angela Rogalski, “and I could have.”

Now she has two more books: Paint Me (2014), and Dress Me which will come out this May. She is also teaching a class with University of Mississippi’s Outreach for Continuing Education on publishing children’s books. The class is on four consecutive Thursdays that began this week and will go on through February 19, 26 and March 5.

For registration information, visit Ole Miss Outreach and register online.

Alysia Burton Steele

As an associate professor at the Meek School of Journalism and New Media, Steele is teaching five different classes, including photojournalism and beginning writing and will tour for her new book, Delta Jewels, in April.

The idea for the book brought Steele’s journey full circle and back to the memories of the grandmother who raised her. Steele is bi-racial and while she could trace her Caucasian roots back to Ireland, her African American heritage was all but lost to her.

“It’s titled Delta Jewels and the subtitle is: In Search of My Grandmother’s Wisdom,” she said to Angela Rogalski. “My grandmother was a southern woman; she was from South Carolina. And she died 20 years ago. And I never sat down with her to know her stories; I never asked her about them. And I don’t know a lot about her, even though she raised me from age four until I was 18. We butted heads a lot, for sure. So I never took the time to ask her more about her life or to collect her stories and that always bothered me. That was my one regret as a journalist and as a granddaughter.”

Watch the video of her sharing her favorite story from the book.

Mary Miller

Mary Miller (courtesy)

Mary Miller is the current Grisham Writer-in-Residence at University of Mississippi. There are no applications for this position; the writers are selected by internal nominations only. Having such a position means not only she lives a walking distance from the campus but she’ll teach one class a semester while working on her stories.

A native Mississippian, Miller is a graduate of the Michener Center for Writers at University of Texas. Her first novel The Last Days of California published last January and was met with glowing reviews. Laurie Muchnick, fiction editor at Kirkus Media and president of National Books Critics Circle, said it was a “terrific first novel.”

Her stories are simple yet gripping. Her audience adores her talent and through the social media grapevine her first collection, “Big World,” became an underground classic.

She also writes about stories at Ireadashortstorytoday.com. Learn more about her on here.