Larry Brown (writer)
William Larry Brown (July 9, 1951 – November 24, 2004) was an American writer known for gritty southern novels and short stories. He grew up near Oxford, Mississippi, served in the Marines, and later studied writing at the University of Mississippi. Brown worked as a firefighter in Oxford while he wrote in his spare time, a life he describes in his memoir On Fire. He published his first story in 1982 and his first book, Facing the Music, in 1988. His breakthrough came with Dirty Work in 1989, and he went on to write Joe (1991), Father and Son (1996), Fay (2000), and The Rabbit Factory (2003). His work is praised for realism, intense violence, and strong sense of place.
Brown won several awards, including the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award for fiction, the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Award, and Mississippi’s Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts. He was the first writer to win the Southern Book Award for Fiction twice. Some of his books were adapted for film: Big Bad Love (2001) and Joe (2013). A documentary about his life, The Rough South of Larry Brown, was released in 2002.
He died of a heart attack in 2004 in the Yocona area near Oxford. He was survived by his wife, Mary Annie Coleman Brown, and three children. His unfinished novel A Miracle of Catfish was published posthumously in 2007 with his notes on the ending.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 02:33 (CET).