Mary South
Photo by Nina Subin
Bio
Mary South is the author of You Will Never Be Forgotten, which was a finalist for the PEN/Bingham Prize for a Debut Story Collection and longlisted for the Story Prize. She has received fellowships and support from MacDowell, Yaddo, the Black Mountain Institute, Ucross, Art Omi: Writers, Storyknife, Ragdale, Kimmel Harding Nelson, VCCA, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. Her fiction has appeared in the New Yorker, American Short Fiction, Conjunctions, Guernica, NOON, and elsewhere.
I’ve been working for a while now on a novel about care: how we care for patients in hospitals and other medical settings while we also care for each other emotionally. I am interested in how the language we use to describe pain and illness contributes to keeping us sick or keeping us invisible; the increasing reliance upon immediate utility in our culture; and exploring the ways in which our personal relationships at the microcosmic level are reflected at the macrocosmic, institutional level. This novel has been the most challenging and rewarding project I’ve ever set out to write. I’m grateful beyond what I can express to the National Endowment for the Arts for finding merit in my sample pages. The grant will allow me to continue caring for myself and my loved ones while providing me with more unrestricted time to complete the manuscript. I will always remember this validation and generosity given to me and my writing.