(COLUMBIA, SC) Dr. Melissa Walker Heidari, associate professor of English at Columbia College, has published To Find My Own Peace, the 1886-1910 journals of New Orleans author Grace King (University of Georgia Press, 2004). These previously unpublished private writings serve to expand readers' understanding of King as a writer and as a nineteenth-century, middle-class white southern woman.
King has long been admired for her versatility, her depictions of both black and white women in a variety of settings, and her insights into the intricate social structure of her native city. Over a span of 46 years, she wrote four histories, three novels, two novellas, three collections of stories, two biographies, an autobiography, a play, and numerous articles and sketches. However, as Heidari notes, King's journals offer "what is so lacking in her published autobiography: humor, irony, and a more candid assessment of herself and others."
Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, the Eleonore Raoul Professor of the Humanities at Emory University, says, "Melissa Walker Heidari's edition of Grace King's journals should be welcomed as a great gift to all who know King's work." And Barbara C. Ewell, professor of English at Loyola University, says, "Heidari makes an extraordinary contribution not only to our understanding of Grace King but also to the complex position of southern women writers, especially after the Civil War."
Heidari, who joined the faculty of Columbia College in 1989, holds B.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of South Carolina and an M.A. degree from the University of Rochester.
