Alice Randall swept through Atlanta with her novel “The Wind Done Gone,” a parody of Margaret Mitchell’s “Gone with the Wind,” which became the subject of controversy and a success.
Randall's book, told from the perspective of Scarlett O’Hara’s mulatto half-sister, Cynara, prompted lawyers representing Mitchell’s heirs to file a copyright infringement against Houghton Mifflin. An undisclosed settlement was reached. “The Wind Done Gone” next landed on The New York Times best-seller list.
Once the legal proceedings were over, Randall dropped from view in Atlanta. She turned to raising a child and writing other books.
Ten years later, Randall has completed three additional novels, became the first permanent writer in residence at Vanderbilt University and watched her daughter graduate from her alma mater, Harvard University.
“It’s been a very busy and a happy time,” said Randall from her home in Nashville.
At Vanderbilt, Randall teaches courses on African-American children’s literature, African-American films and country music lyrics, with the latter something she's done with help from Grammy winning singer-songwriter Steve Earle.
“He’s one of the people who inspired me to write from the very beginning,” Randall said. “He’s one of my oldest and best friends.”
Randall co-wrote XXX’s and OOO’s (An American Girl) with Matraca Berg, a Grammy winning country singer and songwriter. The song, performed by Trisha Yearwood, climbed to No. 1 on the country music charts.
Randall’s third novel, “Rebel Yell,” also touches on the Civil War, same as "The Wind Done Gone." Her second novel, “Pushkin and the Queen of Spades,” has received accolades from The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times. A fourth novel, which also has a Civil War connection, has been picked up by Bloomsbury.
“Getting four books out in a decade, it’s just wild to me that that’s happened,” she said. “It’s fun as a writer. You're always grateful to get your next cut.”
“The Wind Done Gone” created opportunity for Randall, who says she wrote it "as an act of love of literature and language, and as an act of recognition of the pain of reading about the African-American experience.”
Randall wasn't bitter about a preliminary injunction that almost stopped the book from being published. The Margaret Mitchell estate had claimed the book was an unauthorized sequel.
“I think it was confusing and there was the immediate rush to judgment as people were reading the book quickly,” she said. “It’s a very complex literary read.”
The novel shows up in classes ranging from parody to Southern literature to African-American literature.
Randall is headed this summer to the famed Yaddo artists’ community in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. She will revise her fourth novel, inFATuation, which is based on her research into soul food as well as on personalized medicine.
“I’m just continuing on this writer’s life,” she said.
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