Today we’d like to introduce you to Gerry Wilson

Hi Gerry, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?

My story is long, so here is just a bit of it.

I turned 83 in September, a number that seems surreal and all too real at the same time, and I have a sense of urgency about my life and writing work. I’m keenly aware that I’m much, much closer to the end of my story than I am to the beginning. I’ve come to call this time of my life my “grace” period: time I neither expected nor asked for, but I recognize it as a gift.

I’m an only child. I grew up in a tiny town in the hills of north Mississippi in a complicated, three-generation household. I analyze the dynamics of that house still, and those dynamics often surface in my fiction. I entered adulthood during impactful times; I was a senior at the University of Mississippi in the fall of 1962 when James Meredith enrolled (the first Black student to enter a segregated Mississippi college or university). Meredith’s admission sparked riots and destruction, but I wasn’t on campus to witness them. My dad had picked me up earlier that Sunday afternoon and whisked me home. He had gotten wind that the governor would make his “stand” and block Meredith’s admission, which would in turn bring chaos. That night, Federal agents ringed the most historic building on campus, but it didn’t stop the violence that broke out and resulted in two deaths, a lingering cloud of teargas that made me cry when I returned to school a week later, and the presence of National Guard and U.S. Army troops on campus for many weeks after.

This isn’t all of my story, obviously, but it’s a marker that haunts me as I look back—with considerable shame—at how immune I was to the history unfolding around me. It probably wasn’t until my first marriage failed and I was looking at “starting over” that the implications of the historical time in which I lived began to come home to me.

In that “new” life, I became a teacher and discovered that I especially enjoyed helping high school kids to love story and to move beyond the five-paragraph essays they had learned to write before they came to me as tenth and eleventh graders. In order to teach “creative” writing, I read as many craft books as I could get my hands on and took writing workshops, and in the process of learning “how to teach,” I found my own fiction voice.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?

Looking back, I suppose the greatest challenge of my life was the failure of my first marriage. But that traumatic time propelled me into a different life, one that in spite of its difficulties opened the door for me to become a writer. I didn’t see it as opportunity or blessing at the time, but I do now.

On a different level, publishing has been a challenge. A few years ago, there was the literary agent who, to put it in the kindest way (for him), “didn’t work out.” Oh, the excitement at first—after trying for a long time, I had finally landed an agent!—but I didn’t recognize the red flags. (We didn’t need a contract, he said; he didn’t suggest revision, and deep down, I knew the book needed work.) And then, after he had sent the manuscript around pretty indiscriminately for six months and we had no takers, he was done. For nearly two years after that, I didn’t write. That may be the biggest regret of my writing life: that I allowed that rejection to side-track me so completely. I’m sad for the wasted time, and yet—maybe I wasn’t ready to write the novel that was published this year, THAT PINSON GIRL. Maybe it—and I—needed that time to “become.”

These days, my age is an obstacle, but more in the sense of my well-being and whether I can continue to be productive than in the sense of ageism in the marketplace. I believe ageism exists, but there’s an incredible number of successful older “creatives” out in the world.

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?

After many years of feeling I hadn’t earned the right to call myself an “author,” I can now do so.

I’ve been writing fiction for thirty years. I gave up teaching a little before retirement age so I could focus more on writing, but my first published novel was a very long time coming. Just this year, Regal House Publishing (owned and run entirely by women), published my debut novel, THAT PINSON GIRL. Literary historical fiction set in the hills of north Mississippi during World War I, THAT PINSON GIRL draws on family myth and the vagaries of that time and place to create a story about a young woman who possesses great courage and resilience in the face of tough odds.

I was drawn first to short stories (I still like to write them). I published my first collection, CROSSCURRENTS AND OTHER STORIES, with Press 53 in 2015. For a long time, I resisted the idea of writing a novel. The long form mystified and frustrated me; I was so accustomed to the concise writing a short story requires that I couldn’t see how to stretch 20 pages’ worth of story into 300—until my husband, my best and toughest critic and cheerleader, suggested that a novel is “just a long story.” Simple, right? Not so much. The mystery and the fear of the blank page are the same for every new work, but I’ve learned the only way forward is to invite them in.

I’m currently revising another historical novel and working on a collection of linked stories. After that, we’ll see.

Risk taking is a topic that people have widely differing views on – we’d love to hear your thoughts.

I take risks every time I approach the page. Oh, not real-world risks, like a firefighter or soldier, or a surgeon each time he picks up the scalpel in the operating room. But let’s say I manage to “finish” a story or novel draft; revision also qualifies as risk. Will this work, or will this? And then there’s the risk, the vulnerability, of sending a piece out for others to read. In the publishing world, will some editor like it enough to take a chance on it?

I wonder if most creatives feel this way—that every effort is an extension of oneself and oh, we are vulnerable. I’m not sure rejection ever gets any easier. I try to let rejections roll off; if there is criticism, I consider it. If more than one journal (or editor) turns a piece down, then I figure I need to take a hard look at it.

And finally, I suppose I could say that simply being 83 is risky, but I’ll take my chances!

Contact Info:

• Website: www,gerrygwilson.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gerrywilson_writer
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/gerry.wilson.10
• Other: Substack: https://gerrywilson.substack.com/

Image Credits

Author photo by Christina Cannon Foto / Christina Cannon

All other images belong to Gerry Wilson.

Here are captions, if you’re interested (coded in image titles):
1. Gerry’s novel at Lemuria Bookstore, Jackson, Mississippi
2. Gerry at work in Wolff Cottage, Fairhope (Alabama) Center for the Writing Arts, September 2024
3. Morning light, Wolff Cottage
4. Tracing character arcs in That Pinson Girl
5. Book event, Lost Dog Coffee, Taylor, Mississippi