Hue and Cry: Stories
The classic debut collection from Pulitzer Prize winner James Alan McPherson
Hue and Cry is the remarkably mature and agile debut story collection from James Alan McPherson, one of America's most venerated and most original writers. McPherson's characters -- gritty, authentic, and pristinely rendered -- give voice to unheard struggles along the dividing lines of race and poverty in subtle, fluid prose that bears no trace of sentimentality, agenda, or apology.
First published in 1968, this collection includes the Atlantic Prize-winning story "Gold Coast" (selected by John Updike for the collection Best American Short Stories of the Century). Now with a new preface by Edward P. Jones, Hue and Cry introduced America to McPherson's unforgettable, enduring vision, and distinctive artistry.
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Become an affiliateJames Alan McPherson (1943-2016) was an essayist and fiction writer, the first African-American to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Born in Savannah, Georgia, and a graduate of Harvard Law School, McPherson was a contributor to The Atlantic, Esquire, Playboy, and many other publications, and was a professor emeritus at the Iowa Writers's Workshop until his death.
Edward P. Jones, the New York Times bestselling author, has been awarded the Pulitzer Prize, for fiction, the National Book Critics Circle award, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and the Lannan Literary Award for The Known World; he also received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2004. His first collection of stories, Lost in the City, won the PEN/Hemingway Award and was short listed for the National Book Award. His second collection, All Aunt Hagar's Children, was a finalist for the Pen/Faulkner Award. He has been an instructor of fiction writing at a range of universities, including Princeton. He lives in Washington, D.C.
"A writer of insight, sympathy, and humor and one of the most gifted young Americans I've had the privilege to read." -- Ralph Ellison
"An astute realist who knows how to turn the conflicts between individual personalities and the surrounding culture into artful and highly serious comedies of manners." -- Newsweek