Discipline: Literature

Doris Austin

Discipline: Literature
MacDowell Fellowships: 1984
Doris Jean Austin (1949 - 1994) was an American author and journalist born in Mobile, Alabama. Austin is most well known for her novel, After the Garden, which won her the DeWitt Wallace/Reader’s Digest Award for Literary Excellence. From 1989 to 1994 Austin taught workshops on fiction at Columbia University and at The Frederick Douglass Creative Art’s Center. Austin also co-founded the Harlem Writers Guild, and later founded the New Renaissance Guild. Austin also published a series of short stories and articles that appeared in the anthology, Black Southern Voices, as well as the publication, Street Lights: Illuminating Tales of the Urban Black Experience, which Austin co-edited. Austin was also a frequent contributor to periodicals such as Essence and The New York Times Book Review, and worked as a reporter for NBC Radio.

Studios

Banks

Doris Austin worked in the Banks studio.

Banks, an ell on the north end of the Lodge dormitory, was first used as an artist’s studio in 1970. Since then, it has played host to an extraordinary list of writers working in several disciplines. In all seasons, Fellows have enjoyed the pastoral view through the French doors facing a field…

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