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Julia Fields

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Julia Fields (born January 21, 1938) is an American writer and poet.

Fields was born on January 21, 1938, in Bessemer, Alabama.[1][2] Her father worked as a preacher, farmer, carpenter, and storekeeper.[2] Fields' early jobs included selling vegetables, waitressing, and factory work, influences that later mingled in her writing with her immersion in African-American churches (their music as well as the lyrical qualities of scripture) and her early interests in botany and poetry.[2] She attended the Presbyterian Knoxville College, graduating in 1961, then studied in at the University of Edinburgh in 1963.[2] She met Langston Hughes in London and he became a mentor to her.[2] In 1971, she earned a master's degree from Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College.[2] She taught high school in Alabama as well as poetry and writing at Hampton Institute, East Carolina University, Howard University, and North Carolina State University.[1]

Influenced by poets of the Harlem Renaissance like Hughes and Georgia Douglas Johnson, as well as black activists of 1960s,[1] Fields published a collection Poems (1968), following a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities; All Day Tomorrow (1966), a three-act play;[3] East of Moonlight (1973);[2] A Summoning, a Shining (1976);[2] Slow Coins (1981);[1] and The Green Lion of Zion Street (1988), a children's collection.[4] In Southern Writers: A New Biographical Dictionary, Sara Andrews Johnston emphasized the thematic breadth of Fields' work, "hallowing the natural world, with farmers as poets, and criticizing a stultifying suburbia, hollow imitations of jazz, or obsessive materialism; they encompass love spent, outrage at lynching and other racial injustices, touching portraits of those in occupations limited by race, and a joyous cry of freedom from a lifestyle racially constricted, in 'High on the Hog.'"[2]

References

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  1. ^ a b c d "Fields, Julia (1938–)." Dictionary of Women Worldwide: 25,000 Women Through the Ages, edited by Anne Commire and Deborah Klezmer, vol. 1, Yorkin Publications, 2007, p. 653. Gale eBooks. Accessed 23 Sept. 2021.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i Johnston, Sara Andrews. "Julia Fields (1938–)." In Joseph M. Flora and Amber Vogel, eds. Southern Writers: A New Biographical Dictionary. Louisiana State University Press, 2006. 132-133. Via Project MUSE.
  3. ^ "'Evening of Poetry' Scheduled at College". The Daily Times-News. 1973-02-22. p. 25. Retrieved 2021-09-23.
  4. ^ "Reader Reviews". The Courier-News. 7 August 1988. p. 39. Retrieved 23 September 2021.

Further reading

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  • "Julia Fields," Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 41, Afro-American Poets Since 1955, Gale, 1985.