Shirley Faye Nelson (née White, October 12, 1925 – April 27, 2022) was an American author of three books, including The Last Year of the War.
[1][2][3] Nelson was born in New Jersey in 1925, and raised in Holliston, Massachusetts, the daughter of fundamentalist Christian parents Arnold and Merlyn White who once belonged to the Shiloh Colony in Maine.
[1][2][7][8] Nelson wrote three books, including The Last Year of the War which received many positive reviews and which won the Harper-Saxton Fellowship, the Chicago Friends of Literature award for fiction, and Honorable Mention for the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize in 1979.
In 2006 she wrote and produced, along with her husband, the documentary film Precarious Peace: God and Guatemala.
[1][2][9] After publishing her first book, Nelson earned a master's degree in English from the University of Albany.