Small Town Girls; A Writer’s Memoir by Jayne Anne Phillips

Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Night Watch, Jayne Anne Phillips, is out with a luminous memoir in essays: Small Town Girls, A Writer’s Memoir.

Jayne Anne Phillips grew up in Appalachia, in the small town of Buckhannon, West Virginia, and each essay in her memoir is imbued with the landscape, the history, and the people of Buckhannon. From essays about the local beauty salon where the women gather to the legendary Hatfield-McCoy feud, her teenage obsession with Jean Shrimpton and the profound influence the work of writers Stephen Crane and Breece D’J Pancake had on her own writing, the essays are far-ranging but knit together the story of this enormously talented writer. Phillips brings us into her childhood and her family – introducing us to her fiercely independent mother, her devoted but often absent father, and her scrappy brothers with their trucks and archery sets.

Part coming-of-age story and part social history, Small Town Girls is Jayne Phillips most personal, most accessible book yet – a love letter to the place and the people who have shaped her perceptions and her writing. Listen to my conversation with Jayne Anne Phillips on WTIP’s Superior Reads on April 23 at 7pm and the 25th at 6am on WTIP Radio, 90.7 Grand Marais.