Barry Hannah (1942–2010) was the author of twelve books: Geronimo Rex, Airships, Ray, The Tennis Handsome, Nightwatchmen, Captain Maximus, Hey Jack, Boomerang, Never Die, Bats Out of Hell, High Lonesome, and Yonder Stands Your Orphan. His work was published in The New Yorker, Esquire, Harper’s, The Southern Review, The Oxford American, Gulf Coast Review, and many other magazines. His achievements in fiction have been honored with an Academy Award in Literature by the American Academy of Arts & Letters, and he was nominated for the American Book Award for Ray and the National Book Award for Geronimo Rex, which won the William Faulkner Prize. He also received the Arnold Gingrich Short Fiction Award for Airships, and his body of work has been recognized with the PEN/Malamud Award for Short Fiction.
Hannah was born in Meridian, Mississippi, in 1942, and grew up in Clinton, where he received a Bachelor of Arts from Mississippi College. He went on to earn a Master of Arts and Master of Fine Arts from the University of Arkansas. Hannah was director of the MFA program at the University of Mississippi in Oxford for three decades, also teaching at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, the Sewanee, and Bennington summer writing seminars, and held teaching appointments at many other colleges and universities. He passed away on March 1, 2010 in Oxford.
Courtesy of Susan Schove Phillips and the Oxford Lafayette County Literacy Council