T ravel Winner of the 1982 North Carolina Award for Literature and author of fifteen published books, Willie Snow Ethridge ‘20 initially became a writer to learn more about the journalism and newspaper career of her fiancé, Mark Ethridge. While Mark was in Europe during World War I, Willie studied journalism at Wesleyan and worked as a human-interest feature writer at The (Macon) Telegraph. After graduation, she worked for one year as a reporter, covering federal court proceedings. Willie and Mark married in October 1921 and, afterwards, she gave up her regular job as a reporter. Mark gave Willie a typewriter for Christmas that year so she continued to submit feature stories as a freelance reporter, often writing for The Atlanta Georgian, a Hearst paper famous for yellow journalism. “I did anything for The Georgian,” she said. “Especially scandal and murders and people running away with other women’s husbands and things like that. The Hearst papers loved scandal.” When her children were in school, Willie found time to write in the mornings or afternoons. But, she claimed, the minute the children or Mark came home she would hide her writing under the mattress. “If anything went wrong with the house they always accused me of writing instead of doing housework.” In 1934, the Ethridge family moved to Washington D.C. and Willie decided to write a book covering one year of her life. As I Live and Breathe was a compilation of her newspaper columns, daily activities and thoughts, accounts of people she met, and other personal things of interest. The book was successful, so she decided to write a novel. Mingled Yarn, a fictional story about the textile mills in Middle Georgia, was released the same week as Gone With The Wind by the same publishing house (Macmillan). Her novel received little attention but Willie pushed on and published more than a dozen other titles covering topics of travel, history, and biography. Willie Snow Ethridge died at the age of eighty-two in Key West, Florida. Born in Georgia at the turn of the twentieth century, Willie was an only daughter with three brothers and grew up knowing she would go to college. Her family lived across the street from the Wesleyan 6
campus and her brothers went to Mercer. “I don’t believe my mother was particularly ambitious for me to ever become anybody special like a writer or evangelist or a great singer or anything,” Willie said. “She just hoped I would be a good Baptist girl.”
F iction According to Mary Ann Taylor-Hall ’59, anyone who finds a voice as a writer understands what a very dramatic process it is. “It’s a process that practically requires confrontation of your own DNA. Finding your voice as a writer,” she said, “is like finding yourself.” Mary Ann has spent more than thirty years on a farm north of Lexington, Kentucky, where she penned three novels, a collection of short stories, a volume of poetry, and edited Missing Mountains, an anthology of Kentucky writers opposed to mountaintop removal coal mining. Barnes & Noble honored her first novel, Come and Go, Molly Snow, with their Discover Great New Writers Award. Published in 1995, the book was heralded as a “remarkable first novel… a literary touchstone…belonging in most public libraries.” Lee Smith of The Journal of Country Music said, “Come Come and Go, Molly Snow is not only one of the best novels ever written about music, it is one of the best novels ever written, period.” Mary Ann was the recipient of the 1979 PEN/Syndicated Fiction Award for her long story Winter Facts and also was awarded ForeWord Magazine’s 2001 Book of the Year in Short Fiction for How She Knows What She Knows About YoYos. She received a grant from Kentucky Arts Council and two grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. Her short stories have appeared in several periodicals, like The Paris Review and The Hudson Review, and in several anthologies including Best American Short Stories. After the publication of her most recent novel, At The Breakers, Mary Ann said that one of the cardinal rules of writing is to never write about a writer, which is exactly what she did. The main character, Jo, learns she must get up early in the morning to find time to write. For the first time in her life she is able to consolidate her sense of self and to contemplate the possibility that she can actually do what she is meant to do. Writing becomes her
salvation. “Jo becomes a writer similar to the way I became a writer,” Mary Ann said. “I had to learn to get up at four in the morning in order to find a time to write that wasn’t full of distractions.” After two years at Wesleyan, Mary Ann completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Florida. She earned a Master of Art in English Literature from Columbia University, and has taught at Auburn University, Miami of Ohio, the University of Puerto Rico, and the University of Kentucky. At work on her next novel, Mary Ann said two of her Wesleyan professors, Dr. George Gignilliat and Ann Munck ‘38, were absolutely pivotal in her beginning as a writer.
S piritual As a young girl, Lucy Neeley Adams ’56 felt music in her soul. In the third grade, she even wrote a book entitled Hymn Stories and Pictures. She envisioned herself as a movie star wearing beautiful dresses that swirled as she danced and sang. Lucy’s father had been a performer and her sister was a talented singer and dancer who became Miss South Carolina in 1945 when Lucy was in the fifth grade. With her own dramatic flair plus natural acting, speaking, and singing talents, Lucy also was destined to entertain. Forty years later, Lucy returned to her childhood ambition of music and entertainment. Using her third-grade project as a starting point, she began researching the origin of popular hymns and telling the “back stories” on the Nashville, Tennessee, Christian radio station WWGM. In her program called The Story Behind the Song, Lucy answered the question “Why do people write songs?” The program began as Lucy sang six words, “I love to tell the story,” and said, “Hi friends, this is Lucy Adams and I tell the story behind the song.” Each five-minute segment told the who, what, where, and why of a Christian hymn along with a verse or two of the music. “I was amazed that I had saved that book from childhood,” she said. “I believe God was directing my steps toward this wonderful music ministry.” The radio segments aired for several years throughout the state. Later, when Lucy moved to Cookeville, Tennessee, she continued to tell the story of the origin of hymns in the local newspaper, the Herald-Citizen. Her column Song Stories