Josephine Humphreys

Josephine Humphreys, who reportedly considered herself of a writer "since [she] was about six," is the author of three widely acclaimed novels. Her first, Dreams of Sleep, won the Ernest Hemingway Foundation Award for the most distinguished first book of fiction in 1984. Rich in Love, which was later made into a feature film, came out in 1987 and was chosen by Publishers' Weekly as one of the 14 best books of fiction to appear that year. The Fireman's Fair was published in 1991. Humphreys' powers of characterization have been compared with those of Walker Percy, one of her favorite writers. And novelist Reynolds Price spoke of her language as distinguished for its "economy, clarity, wit, and the constant wise beauty that's half her news."