Kathryn Tucker Windham

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Kathryn Tucker Windham (born as Kathryn Tucker ; born June 2, 1918 in Selma , Alabama ; † June 12, 2011 ibid) was an American journalist and narrator who, in her stories about the southern states of the USA, describes the folklore of the south, bucolic Poetry , memories, recipes and ghost stories are interwoven and is considered one of the most important writers in Alabama.

Life

Kathryn Tucker spent her childhood in Thomasville and even during her childhood she was shaped by the stories of her father, who, as a gifted storyteller, combined family stories, strange stories and the quirks of nature. In 1930, at the age of twelve, she began writing film reviews for the local newspaper The Thomasville Times . After attending school, the daughter of a banker studied at Huntingdon College in Alabama, which she graduated in 1939.

After graduating from Huntingdon College, she was a police reporter at The Alabama Journal in Montgomery , before moving to the Birmingham News in 1943 as a journalist , where she met the reporter Amasa Windham, whom she married in 1946 .

After her husband's death in 1956, she devoted herself increasingly to writing, often telling simple, self-experienced thoughts and stories, such as why she always paused until a buzzard flapped its wings: “Because everyone knows that it is really bad luck when you see a buzzard - something terrible will happen to you unless it flaps its wings again. ”('' Cause everybody knows that if you see one buzzard, it's real bad luck - something awful is going to happen to you unless he flaps his wings. ') or of what she called' false dawn ', when at the first glint of the day, when the birds besieged a swamp with cacophonic chorus, and then until real sunrise silent. Above all, however, she liked telling ghost stories.

Kathryn Tucker Windham wrote a total of 26 books. Six of her books were based on the ghost stories she collected while traveling through Alabama, Mississippi , Tennessee, and Georgia . In 13 Alabama Ghosts and Jeffrey (1969), for example, she told of the Red Lady of Huntingdon College ('Red Lady of Huntingdon College') floating through Pratt Hall at night in a red dress and under an umbrella, quiet but with her heels clattering.

She told in Alabama: One Big Front Porch (1975), one of her best-known books, of the Hoop Snake, a legendary creature in the United States, mules, rabbits, fox hunts , gardens, and great-great-grandmothers that she met while wandering through Alabama.

In her last book Spit, Scarey Ann & Sweat Bees (2009), she again described childhood memories, how she was afraid of a short-lived fright , about the wooden doll she had hidden in a box, about the day her mother caught her lighting a match and the encounters with sweat bees who land on people and suck their sweat .

In a deliberately stretched slang of the southern states, she also began her own radio show on Alabama Public Radio in 1984 and moderated this show for almost twenty years, mostly with her own observations. Between 1985 and 1987 these comments were also broadcast on National Public Radio's All Things Considered . Her commentary was titled, for example, Grits Is a Singular Delicacy , Honeysuckle Blossoms Smell Wonderful, and The Tree-Sitting Record of Clark County, 1930s . Her then-producer of All Things Considered , Art Silverman, said of her style of speaking:

“Her breaks were almost as long as the content. She slowed us down to feel like we were in central Alabama. ”('Her pauses were almost as long as the content. She slowed us down to feel like we were in central Alabama.').

The Kathryn Tucker Windham Museum opened on June 1, 2003 on the grounds of the Alabama Southern Community College (ASCC) on the occasion of her 85th birthday.

Publications

  • Treasured Alabama Recipes (1964)
  • 13 Alabama Ghosts and Jeffrey (co-author Margaret Gillis Figh, 1969)
  • Jeffrey Introduces 13 More Southern Ghosts (1971)
  • Treasured Tennessee Recipes (1972)
  • Thirteen Georgia Ghosts and Jeffrey (1973)
  • Treasured Georgia Recipes (1973)
  • Exploring Alabama (1974)
  • Thirteen Mississippi Ghosts and Jeffrey (1974)
  • Alabama: One Big Front Porch (1975)
  • Thirteen Tennessee Ghosts and Jeffrey (1977)
  • The Ghost in the Sloss Furnaces (1978)
  • Southern Cooking to Remember (1978)
  • Cou nt Those Buzzards! Stamp Those Gray Mules (1979)
  • Jeffrey's Latest Thirteen: More Alabama Ghosts (1982)
  • A Serigamy of Stories (1988)
  • Odd-Egg Editor (1990)
  • A Sampling of Selma Stories (1991)
  • The Autobiography of a Bell (1991)
  • Twice-Blessed (1996)
  • Bridal Wreath Bush (1999)
  • Common Threads (with photographs by Chip Cooper, 2000)
  • It's Christmas (2002)
  • Ernest's Gift (2004)
  • Jeffrey's Favorite 13 Ghost Stories: From Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, and Mississippi (2004)
  • Spit, Scarey Ann, & Sweat Bees: One Thing Leads to Another (2009)

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kathryn Tucker Windham Museum (homepage of the Alabama Southern Community College) ( Memento from October 17, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ Kathryn Tucker Windham Museum. Coastal Alabama Community College , accessed May 29, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Windham, Kathryn Tucker
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Tucker, Kathryn (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American writer and journalist
DATE OF BIRTH June 2, 1918
PLACE OF BIRTH Selma , Alabama
DATE OF DEATH June 12, 2011
Place of death Selma , Alabama