about the author
Elizabeth Cox began writing poetry in the late 1970's, and published poems in many literary magazines, and more recently in The Southern Review and The Atlantic Monthly. Her first story, "Land of Goshen," was cited for excellence by Best American Short Stories and Pushcart Press. Two of her stories have been read on NPR, and another story, "The Third of July" was selected for the 1994 O. Henry Award Collection, and a collection of stories, Bargains in the Real World, was published by Random House. Another story "Old Court" was read at Symphony Space by Joan Allen.
In 1985 she won the North Carolina Fiction Award- Individual Artist Grant, and received a Massachusetts Arts Council Grant in 2000. She had a Fellowship at Yaddo and McDowell Writers Colonies. She has also written essays for Ms. Magazine, Lears, North Carolina Magazine, and The Oxford American.
Ms. Cox has completed four novels:
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Familiar Ground (Atheneum, 1984; paperback Avon,1986)
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The Ragged Way People Fall Out Of Love (North Point Press, 1991; paperback HarperCollins, 1992)
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Night Talk (Graywolf Press, 1997, paperback, St. Martin's Press). Night Talk won the Lillian Smith Award given by the Southern Regional Council. This award chooses books that raise the social consciousness and promote harmony between the races. It was a finalist for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.
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The Slow Moon published by Random House in 2006 (paperback, Random House).
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Cox taught creative writing at Duke University for seventeen years. She has also taught at University of Michigan, Tufts University, Boston University, Bennington Low Residency Program, and MIT. She teaches now at Wofford College in South Carolina where she shares (with her husband Michael Curtis) the John Cobb Chair of Humanities.
In April 2011, Cox will be inducted into the Fellowship of Southern Writers (which includes such writers as Shelby Foote, Flannery O'Connor, Eudora Welty, Ernest Gaines, Ralph Ellison, Walker Percy, Wendell Berry, and other southern literati). She will also be awarded the Robert Penn Warren Award for fiction for her body of work.