James Alan McPherson

James Alan McPherson (born September 16, 1943, Savannah, Georgia, U.S.—died July 27, 2016, Iowa City, Iowa) was an American author whose realistic, character-driven short stories examine racial tension, the mysteries of love, the pain of isolation, and the contradictions of American life. Despite his coming of age as a writer during the Black Arts movement, his stories transcend issue-oriented politics. He was the first African American winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, for his second short-story collection, Elbow Room (1977).

McPherson was educated at Morgan State University, Baltimore, Maryland (1963–64), Morris Brown College, Atlanta (B.A., 1965), Harvard University Law School (LL.B., 1968), and the University of Iowa (M.F.A., 1969). He launched his literary career with the short story “Gold Coast,” which won a contest in The Atlantic Monthly in 1968, and the following year he became a contributing editor of the magazine. “Gold Coast” examines the race, class, and age barriers between Robert, a black Harvard student who aspires to be a writer, and James Sullivan, an older white janitor who seeks companionship.

In 1968 McPherson published his first volume of short fiction, Hue and Cry. In addition to “Gold Coast,” the bleak tales of Hue and Cry include the title story, about interracial relationships; “Solo Song: For Doc,” about the decline of an elderly waiter; “An Act of Prostitution,” about the inconsistencies of the justice system; and “On Trains,” about racial prejudice. His next collection, the award-winning Elbow Room (1977), contained stories—among them “Elbow Room,” “A Loaf of Bread,” and “Widows and Orphans”—that tend to be less bleak than those of the earlier collection and that balance bitterness with hope.

McPherson taught at the University of California, Santa Cruz (1969–70), Morgan State University (1975–76), and the University of Virginia (1976–81) before taking up a post in 1981 at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Also in 1981, he was among the inaugural class of 21 people to receive a “genius grant” from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Although he continued to write essays, articles, and short stories that appeared in journals, he did not write another book until Crabcakes (1998), a personal memoir. His final book, A Region Not Home: Reflections from Exile (2000), is a collection of essays.