These biographies are a part of my work as a Fall 2024 intern with The Georgia Writers Museum.
Eugenia Price was an author, an inspirational speaker, and a community activist for coastal Georgia. She wrote over 50 books in multiple genres, such as inspirational/self-help, historical nonfiction, and historical romance. She has sold over 40 million books, and many of her novels made the New York Times bestseller list.
Price was born June 22, 1916, in Charleston, West Virginia. At age sixteen, she moved to Ohio and started college as an English major at Ohio University. She changed her major and her college two more times, first to dentistry at Northwestern University, then to philosophy at the University of Chicago. Price left the University to pursue a career in writing, starting with a job at the National Broadcasting Company. Later in her career, she wrote the serial radio broadcast, Joyce Jordan, M.D.
In 1945, she created her own broadcasting company called Eugenia Price Productions. Her Christian radio show, Unshackled (1950s),jump-started her career as an inspirational speaker and author. Price traveled across the U.S. to speak at churches and civic meetings and provide author signings for her inspirational books such as Beloved World (1961).
While traveling on a book tour for Beloved World, Price and her author friend, Joyce Blackburn, visited St. Simons Island’s Christ Church. They were entranced by the story of a local minister, who became the inspiration for Price’s first historical romance, The Beloved Invader (1965). Now known as The St. Simons trilogy: The Beloved Invader (1965), New Moon Rising (1969), and Lighthouse (1971), the books are loved for the real characters and details of the island’s 19th century history. This series helped increase tourism and launched the creation of the Coastal Georgia Historical Society.
Price and Blackburn moved to St. Simons and spent two years researching and interviewing the island’s residents. Price wrote two more historical romance series also set in Georgia, the Savannah Quartet: Savannah (1983), To See Your Face Again (1985), Before the Darkness Falls (1987), and Stranger in Savannah (1989); and the Georgia Trilogy: Bright Captivity (1991), Where Shadows Go (1993), and Beauty from Ashes (1995). Price was considered a true Southerner for her historically accurate retellings and love for St. Simons Island, where she lived for the next three decades of her life.
On May 28, 1996, shortly after writing her last novel, Eugenia Price died of congestive heart failure. She is buried at the Christ Church Episcopal Cemetery on St. Simons Island, the same cemetery in which the main character in The Beloved Invader is buried. She is best known for her historical romance novels and the dedication to coastal Georgia that is continued by her nonprofit organization. The Eugenia Price-Joyce Blackburn Foundation carries the philanthropic legacy and artistic influence of both authors, provides grants and scholarships for writers, and supports multiple charitable organizations that help preserve the history of the coastal South.
Melissa Fay Greene is a nonfiction author, journalist, and professor who lives in Atlanta, Georgia. She is most well-known for her compelling writing of lesser-known histories that shed light on vulnerable human experiences. Greene received two National Book Award nominations, a National Book Critics Circle Award nomination, the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award, the ACLU Civil Liberties Award, and the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize. In 2011, she was inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame.
Greene was born December 30, 1952, in Macon, Georgia. In 1959, her family moved to Dayton, Ohio, where she attended school. She graduated from Oberlin College with a Bachelor’s degree in 1975. That same year, she married Donald Franklin Samuel and they moved to Savannah, Georgia, and together worked for Georgia Legal Services.
In 1981, Greene began working as a journalist. She covered a variety of topics while writing for magazines such as Country Journal, The New Yorker, Good Housekeeping, LIFE, and The New York Times Magazine. Her articles included her own children, as well as African children who lost their parents to AIDS. She also wrote biographies, featuring people such as Constance Baker—a groundbreaking Black woman who became a lawyer in the 1940s and fought for Civil Rights.
In 1991, Greene published her first book, Praying for Sheetrock, which NYU cited as one of the top 100 works of American journalism in the twentieth century. She released five more books in the 2000s, and in 2010 she received an honorary doctorate from Emory University.
Greene’s work greatly affected her personal life, as she adopted five children from oversea orphanages: four from Ethiopia and one from Bulgaria. In 2011, she published a memoir, No Biking in the House without a Helmet (2011), sharing the story of her family’s evolution.
In 2017, Greene spent three semesters as a Writer-in-Residence at Agnes Scott College. She is currently a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Georgia. When she is not teaching, reading, or writing, she spends time with her husband, nine children (four biological, five adopted), and four grandchildren.
John Oliver Killens was an author, teacher, and political activist. He was co-founder of the Harlem Writers Guild, and advanced the Black Arts movement. His novels, Youngblood (1954), And Then We Heard the Thunder (1963), and The Cotillion: or One Good Bull Is Half the Herd (1971), were all nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. By combining literature and activism, his novels challenged Jim Crow laws. His life contributed greatly to the Civil Rights Movement.
Killens was born January 14, 1916, in Macon, Georgia, and attended the Ballard Normal School for secondary education. Upon graduation, he attended multiple universities: Edward Waters College in Jacksonville, Florida; Morris Brown College in Atlanta, Georgia; and Howard University and H. Terrell Law School in Washington, D.C. In 1942, before he could complete a law degree, Killens was drafted and served in World War II. The following year, he married Grace Ward Jones, and they had two children.
Once discharged from the military, Killens resumed his education at Columbia University in New York City. Pursuing creative writing, he submitted manuscripts to the New York University Writing Center. In 1952, his short story, “God Bless America,” was published in The California Quarterly.
In the spring of 1954, Killens published his first novel, Youngblood. Following the advice of Langston Hughes, his Omega Psi Phi fraternity brother, Killens promoted his novel at bookstores and libraries, and spoke to unions and cultural groups. He received high praise from the literary community, which eventually connected him to notable activists such as Maya Angelou, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King, Jr. In the 1960s, Killens joined the front lines of many protests, including the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
Killens went on to publish six novels, and wrote screenplays, short stories, and essays, while continuing to be an activist for racial equality. He cofounded the Organization of Afro-American Unity and the Black Academy of Arts and Letters, which helped to advance the Black Arts Movement. In the 1970s, Killens became a writer in residence at Howard University’s Institute for the Arts and Humanities. Throughout his teaching career he taught at universities such as Fisk and Columbia.
Cementing a legacy in African American literary history, Killens continued to teach, create, and attend writers’ conferences. He died of cancer on October 27, 1987, in Brooklyn, New York. In 2021, three decades after his death, a completed manuscript of his novel, The Minister Primarily, was discovered and published. His work remains a powerful declaration for freedom and equality for African Americans.