Morgan, Berry 1919-2002
MORGAN, Berry 1919-2002
OBITUARY NOTICE—See index for CA sketch: Born c. May 19, 1919, in Port Gibson, MS; died from complications of a series of strokes June 19, 2002, in Charles Town, WV. Educator and author. Morgan was a teacher of creative writing, first at Northeast Louisiana University in the 1970s, then later at American University, the Catholic University of America, and George Washington University, all located in Washington, D.C. Funded by a Houghton Mifflin literary fellowship in the 1960s, he began what was intended to be a trilogy of novels. The first volume, Pursuit, relates a bizarre tale of obsession and lunacy revolving around a southern plantation and an adjoining town not unlike the community where Morgan herself grew up. The next volume, described alternately as a novel and a collection of stories and titled The Mystic Adventures of Roxie Stoner, features the titular character as a townswoman serving the plantation family of Pursuit as a nanny. Morgan's fiction was well received by some critics for its exploration of the human spirit. Some of her stories were also published in the New Yorker.
OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:
BOOKS
Contemporary Literary Criticism, Volume 6, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1976.
Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 6: American Novelists since World War II, Second Series, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1980, pp. 241-243.
PERIODICALS
Washington Post, June 27, 2002, p. B6.