Hickman, Lisa C. 1959–

PERSONAL:

Born 1959. Education: University of Mississippi, Ph.D.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Memphis, TN.

CAREER:

Writer, college professor, and independent scholar.

WRITINGS:

William Faulkner and Joan Williams: The Romance of Two Writers, foreword by Richard Bausch, McFarland (Jefferson, NC), 2006.

Contributor to periodicals, including the Southern Quarterly, Housman Society Journal, Memphis, Memphis Flyer, Teaching Faulkner, and the Sunday Des Moines Register.

SIDELIGHTS:

Lisa C. Hickman is a writer and independent scholar whose works focus on Southern literature and the life and writings of acclaimed Southern writers William Faulkner and Joan Williams. In William Faulkner and Joan Williams: The Romance of Two Writers, Hickman explores the personal and professional relationship that developed between Faulkner and Williams from 1949 to 1953. More than three decades separated the two writers—Faulkner was fifty-one, Williams was twenty, when their association began. For Faulkner's part, he hoped that their correspondence would blossom into romance; Williams was not equally taken with that idea, but instead hoped to learn more about writing from the accomplished Faulkner. However, their relationship in all its nuances and levels was immensely important to the work and life of each author. At the time, Faulkner was involved in an unhappy marriage, his literary career was at a disheartening ebb, and he was plagued by depression, alcoholism, and substance abuse. Williams, vibrant and beautiful, was a budding writer with a deep interest in the Southern literary tradition and a single-minded focus on developing her writing abilities. Impressed by her talents and physical beauty, Faulkner offered to "serve as suitor, lover, mentor, and father figure, and she could be, in his own words, ‘maid’ and ‘maiden,’ in addition to muse and object of desire—someone to write not only to but for," noted Leonard Gill in Memphis Magazine Online. Although the pair never settled on the precise character of their relationship, and it did not lead to the romance that Faulkner desired, their association nonetheless deeply affected each of them. Based on the actual letters exchanged by Faulkner and Williams, and on interviews conducted with Williams before her death in 2004, Hickman creates a "fascinating book" that "treats their bond with a deft hand," observed Felicity D. Walsh in the Library Journal.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Library Journal, March 15, 2007, Felicity D. Walsh, review of William Faulkner and Joan Williams: The Romance of Two Writers, p. 72.

Phi Beta Kappa: The Key Reporter, summer, 2007, M. Thomas Inge, review of William Faulkner and Joan Williams, p. 14.

Southern Register, spring, 2007, Joan Wylie Hall, review of William Faulkner and Joan Williams, pp. 26-28.

ONLINE

Memphis Magazine Online,http://www.memphismagazine.com/ (October 3, 2007), Leonard Gill, "Dearest Bill," review of William Faulkner and Joan Williams.

Mississippi Writers Page,http://www.olemiss.edu/mwp/ (October 3, 2007), biography of Lisa C. Hickman.

Tennessean,http://www.tennessean.com/ (October 11, 2007), Jack Brimm, breview of William Faulkner and Joan Williams.