Working as a paralegal in Savannah in the 1970s, Melissa Fay Greene witnessed an impoverished black community mobilize against a corrupt white sheriff.
Several years later, Greene, who now lives in Atlanta near Emory University, chronicled the political awakening and the cracking of the white power structure in McIntosh County in the gripping book “Praying for Sheetrock,” published in 1991.
Vividly written, this first nonfiction book by Greene was a finalist for both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. “Praying for Sheetrock” was also included in New York University’s list of the 100 greatest works of 20th-century journalism.
A 1975 graduate of Oberlin College, Greene, 63, is also the author of four more acclaimed books of nonfiction, including "No Biking in the House Without a Helmet," a deeply personal, inspiring (and at times, wickedly funny) story about how she, her husband and their four birth children opened their hearts to five more children through adoption: a girl and four boys from Bulgaria and Ethiopia.
Greene, a native of Macon, was inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame in 2011.
Greene’s other books include “The Temple Bombing” (1996), “Last Man Out: The Story of the Springhill Mine Disaster” (2003) and “There Is No Me Without You” (2007), the story about an Ethiopian orphanage for children left parentless by AIDS.
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