James Alan McPherson is the author of Hue and Cry, Railroad, Elbow Room, Crabcakes, Fathering Daughters, and A Region not Home. His work has appeared in numerous journals, magazines, and anthologies, including The Best American Essays 1995. In 1995 McPherson was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is the recipient of many national literary awards, including a Pulitzer Prize and a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship award. He is a member of the fiction faculty at the Writer's Workshop at the University of Iowa. He was a Pew Fellowships panelist in 2009.