Larry Brown (author)

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Larry Brown
Born	July 9, 1951 Oxford, Mississippi
Occupation	Writer
Genres	Literature

For other people of the same name, see Larry Brown (disambiguation).

Larry Brown (July 9, 1951–November 24, 2004) was an American writer who was born and lived in Oxford, Mississippi. Brown wrote non-fiction and fiction. He graduated from high school in Oxford but did not go to college. Many years later, he took a creative writing class from the Mississippi novelist Ellen Douglas. Brown served in the United States Marine Corps from 1970 - 1972. On his return to Oxford from his time in the service, he worked at a small stove company before obtaining employment with the city fire department.

An avid reader, Brown began writing in his spare time while he worked as a fire-fighter (at City Station No.1 on North Lamar Blvd.) in Oxford in 1980. The non-fiction book On Fire describes how Brown would have trouble sleeping at night at the fire station and would stay up and read and write while the other firefighters' slept. His duties as a firefighter included answering fire alarms at Rowan Oak, the home of William Faulkner, which is now a museum, and the University of Mississippi campus. By his own account, Brown wrote five unupublished novels, including one which he always used as an example to younger writers about a man-eating bear loose in Yellowstone Park, and hundreds of short stories before he began to publish. His first published work was a short story that appeared in the June 1982 issue of biker magazine Easyriders. He received his first success with the publication of two collections of short stories: Facing the Music (1988) and Big Bad Love (1990). After 1990, Brown turned to writing full time and increasingly turned to the novel as his primary form. Brown's novels include Dirty Work (1989), Father and Son (1996), Joe (1991), Fay (2000), and The Rabbit Factory (2003).

In March 2007, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill published Brown's unfinished novel A Miracle of Catfish. Although Brown died before finishing the book, the final page of the published version includes his notes about how he wanted the novel to end. The novel also includes a lengthy introduction by Brown's editor Shannon Ravenel discussing her work on the project and her work with Brown over the years. Except for the novel The Rabbit Factory, all of Brown's books were published by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, a division of Workman Publishing. The paperback editions of Brown's early works were published by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, although other paperback houses picked up his later works.

Brown's non-fiction includes On Fire (1995), on the 17 years (1973-1990) he spent as a firefighter. Other non-fiction includes Billy Ray's Farm (2001).

Brown was awarded the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters award for fiction. Brown was the first two-time winner of the Southern Book Award for Fiction, which he won in 1992 for his novel, Joe, and again in 1997 for his novel Father and Son. In 1998, he was the recipient of a Lila Wallace-Readers Digest Award, which granted him $35,000 per year for three years to write. In 2000, the State of Mississippi granted him a Governor's Award For Excellence in the Arts.

For one semester, Brown taught as a writer-in-residence in the creative writing program at the University of Mississippi, temporarily taking over the position held by his friend Barry Hannah. He later served as visiting writer at the University of Montana in Missoula. He taught briefly at other colleges throughout the US. He has been compared to other southern writers, including Cormac McCarthy, William Faulkner, and Harry Crews. In interviews, Brown cites these along with Flannery O'Connor, Raymond Carver, and Charles Bukowski as influences. He also attributed a certain amount of influence to contemporary music, and his tastes were broad. He made appearances with the Texas alt-rock band fronted by Alejandro Escovedo, a good friend of his, and he also cited the lyrics of Leonard Cohen as being influential. He also counted among his friends many from the film industry, including Billy Bob Thornton.

A film based on Big Bad Love starring Debra Winger and Arliss Howard, was released in 2001,. The majority of the film was made in neighboring Marshall County and Holly Springs, to the north of Oxford. Independent filmmaker Gary Hawkins directed a documentary of Brown's life and works in The Rough South of Larry Brown (2002).

Brown, a heavy smoker^[1] and binge drinker ^[2] died of an apparent heart attack at his home in the Tula community, near Oxford. Brown was also a member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, though he died before he was able to take his seat.

In an article printed a week after his death, USA Today reporter Bob Minzesheimer revealed the last years of Larry Brown's life involved binge drinking and a practice he called "binge writing". Larry also confessed that his own father "drank way too much."^[3]