James Alan McPherson, prize-winning author, dead at 72

[truebluefan]

James Alan McPherson, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning story collection "Elbow Room" and a longtime faculty member at the University of Iowa's prestigious Writers' Workshop, has died.





McPherson died Wednesday at Mercy Hospital in Iowa City from complications of pneumonia, according to Iowa program secretary Deborah L. West. He was 72 and retired from Iowa in 2014.





A native of Savannah, Georgia and graduate of Harvard Law School who chose instead to become a writer, McPherson was best known for "Elbow Room," candid and compassionate takes on race and the misunderstandings between black and white. Published in 1977, "Elbow Room" was praised by The New York Times for the "fine control of language and story," ''depth in his characters" and "humane values" and made McPherson the first African-American to win the fiction Pulitzer.

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