Louise Shivers - Hear a Tale

Supported by

Louise Shivers, writer-in-residence at Georgia Regents University, was primarily a lyric poet before joining a group of Augusta writers whose main interest was short fiction. Pressured, she began writing narrative poems before attempting her first novel, Here to Get My Baby Out of Jail, which was published by Random House in 1983. The book’s compelling, noir-like prose received praise from Erskine Caldwell, Eudora Welty and Rita Mae Brown—and rave reviews from The New Yorker, The New York Times, Washington Post Book World and The Los Angeles Times, among many others. Named Best First Novel of the Year by USA Today and condensed in Redbook and Harper’s & Queen (UK), the novel was also published in France and throughout the British Commonwealth. Made into the feature motion picture, Summer Heat, the film had its world premiere in Augusta. Proceeds from the gala event established a scholarship in honor of Shivers’ father, The Will Shingleton Scholarship for writing students attending GRU. Her second novel, A Whistling Woman, also critically acclaimed, earned Shivers a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and Georgia Author of the Year Award. In 2014, she published My Shining Hour: A Novelist’s Memoir of World War II. A stage adaptation of Here to Get My Baby Out of Jail by playwright Jayetta Slawson was produced and recently published in the anthology textbook Word and Image. Louise Shivers is currently completing her eastern North Carolina trilogy of novels with Leaving Cold Harbor, set during the Civil War.

Books

Here to Get My Baby Out of Jail, Part 1

Here to Get My Baby Out of Jail, Part 2

Here to Get My Baby Out of Jail, Part 3

Here to Get My Baby Out of Jail, Part 4

Here to Get My Baby Out of Jail, Part 5

Here to Get My Baby Out of Jail, Part 6

Here to Get My Baby Out of Jail, Part 7

Here to Get My Baby Out of Jail, Part 8

Here to Get My Baby Out of Jail, Part 9

Here to Get My Baby Out of Jail, Part 10

Here to Get My Baby Out of Jail, Part 11