Willie Morris

Morris had a lyrical prose style which he lent to reflections on the American South, including Yazoo City and the Mississippi Delta.

After graduating as valedictorian of his Yazoo City High School class, Morris attended the University of Texas at Austin.

As an example of the animosity, Morris wrote in North Toward Home that the university did not acknowledge his award of a Rhodes Scholarship with even as much as a letter of congratulation.

In 1963, Morris joined the staff of Harper's Magazine, in New York City, as associate editor, and in 1967 he was named editor-in-chief.

In the same year he published North Toward Home, which became a bestseller and earned the Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship Award for non-fiction.

As the youngest-ever editor-in-chief of an influential literary magazine, Morris helped to launch the careers of notable writers such as William Styron and Norman Mailer.

[2] But the Cowles family, owners of Harper's Magazine, was perplexed by the content Morris published: longer articles of overtly liberal sentiment that offended cautious advertisers.

Amidst falling ad sales, the Cowles family expressed their dissatisfaction with Morris until he resigned under pressure in 1971.

In 2000, My Dog Skip, another of Morris' books and an unofficial prequel to the earlier film, was made into a major motion picture starring Frankie Muniz, Diane Lane, Luke Wilson and Kevin Bacon.

In life he counted among his friends a wide circle, including Yazoo City childhood friends, well-known writers like Winston Groom (Forrest Gump), William Styron (Sophie's Choice), John Knowles (A Separate Peace), James Dickey (Deliverance) and Irwin Shaw (Rich Man, Poor Man), and Larry L. King ("The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas").