Gone with the wind author

Pulitzer prize finalists by year
Scarlet sister mary
Who is the author of the yearling

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Life out of Darkness: The Recovery of Julia Peterkin, Forgotten Pulitzer Prize Winner

If asked to name the first southern novelist to win a Pulitzer Prize, most Americans might guess William Faulkner or Margaret Mitchell. The honor actually belongs to Julia Peterkin (1880-1961), a largely forgotten, self-styled plantation mistress from South Carolina whose meteoric career rendered her name and novels household words for the better part of three decades. Peterkin’s best-selling 1929 Pulitzer-prizewinner, Scarlet Sister Mary (1928), tells the story of Mary Pinesett, a spirited and rebellious—some said promiscuous—black woman who, having been abandoned by July, her “heart-love” husband, determines to have the family of her dreams—but on her own terms. With the aid of a love charm, Mary lures unnamed partners into assignations, bears nine children of different paternity, and, by reveling in the arrival of each baby, spurns the condemnation of her tight knit community at Blue Brook Plantation. Modernist critics greeted Scarlet Sister Mary as a masterpi

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Julia Mood Peterkin | SC Hall of Fame

Julia Mood was born in Laurens County on Halloween 1880. Her mother died when she was two years old. Julia, as a teenager, attended Converse College and received a Masters degree at an early age.

Julia moved to Fort Motte in Calhoun County to become a teacher. In 1903, she married William George "Willy" Peterkin, who was a rich cotton planter.

Lang Syne Plantation employed 400 mostly African-American workers. Julia began writing stories about life on the plantation, featuring realistic African-American characters. She sent these stories to H.L. Mencken and Carl Sandburg. They were interested, and the result in 1924 was her first book, Green Thursday.

Reviews were favorable. "She is a Southern white woman, but she has the eye and the ear to see beauty and to know truth." -W.E.B. Du Bois, The Crisis

Her next book, Black April, was the story of a plantation foreman, a powerful man taken down by the system. Black April's life ended sadly, and his last words are poignant, "Bury me in a man-sized box!"

Scarlet Sister Mary&nbs

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Peterkin, Julia Mood

Born 31 October 1880, Laurens County, South Carolina; died 10 August 1961, Fort Motte, South Carolina

Daughter of Julius A. and Alma Archer Mood; married William Peterkin, 1903

The youngest of four children, Julia Mood Peterkin spent several years with her grandparents in rural South Carolina after her mother's early death. Later, she lived in Sumter, South Carolina, with her father. After receiving her B.A. and M.A. degrees from Converse College, Spartanburg, South Carolina, Peterkin taught at Fort Motte, a small, isolated community. She married the owner of Lang Syne plantation there. There were few whites and many blacks on the 2,000-acre plantation. Because of her husband's ill health, Peterkin took over most of the responsibilities of running Lang Syne until her son William was able to assume the actual management.

Peterkin began writing in her early forties, and her work was centered around Fort Motte and Murrell's Inlet, a coastal village in South Carolina where she had a summer home. Plantation stories were a popular genre from antebellum