Archive Date: 1981
Archive Text: James McPherson reading at The University of Iowa, 1981. In this audio archive, James McPherson reads his short story "There was once a State Called Franklin."
James Alan McPherson taught as a professor of creative writing at the University of Iowa. McPherson came to the University of Iowa as a student in the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 1969. He left in 1972, and would go on to teach at the University of California at Santa Cruz and the University of Virginia before returning in 1979 to join the permanent faculty in the Writers Workshop. In 1981, McPherson won the MacArthur Foundation Award, an award that recognizes and supports creative excellence. McPherson is also the first African-American to win the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for his short story collection, Elbow Room, in 1978.