Tucker, Judy H. 1939-

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Tucker, Judy H. 1939-
(Judy Hall Tucker)

PERSONAL:

Born August 6, 1939, in Hopaca, MS; daughter of Clay Sharkey (a farmer) and Myra Lewis (a homemaker; maiden name, Murphy) Hall; married Doyce C. Tucker (an engineer), August 20, 1960; children: Jane, Carole Tucker Thorn, John. Ethnicity:"Scots/Irish." Politics: "Left-wing, liberal, bleeding-heart Democrat."

ADDRESSES:

Home and office—6019 Lake Trace Cr., Jackson, MS 39211. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Freelance writer, editor, playwright, and book reviewer.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Evelyn Cole Peters Award for drama, Daughters of the American Revolution, for A Visit with Mrs. Jemison.

WRITINGS:

(Author of text) Another Coat of Paint (paintings by Wyatt Waters), Quail Ridge Press (Brandon, MS), 1995.

(Author of text) Painting Home (paintings by Wyatt Waters), Water Press (Jackson, MS), 1998.

(Editor and contributor, with Charline R. McCord)Christmas Stories from Mississippi, illustrated by Wyatt Waters, University Press of Mississippi (Jackson, MS), 2001.

(Editor and coauthor of introduction, with Charline R. McCord) A Very Southern Christmas: Stories for the Holidays, paintings by Wyatt Waters, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill (Chapel Hill, NC), 2003.

(Editor and coauthor of introduction, with Charline R. McCord) Christmas in the South, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill (Chapel Hill, NC), 2004.

(Coeditor) Dixie Christmas, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill (Chapel Hill, NC), 2005.

Contributor of articles and reviews to periodicals, including Planet Weekly, Clarion Ledger, Northside Sun, and Mississippi.

PLAYS

The Brooch (one-act), produced in Jackson, MS, at New Stage Theater, 1999.

The Visit, performed in staged reading at State Theater of Alabama, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, 2003.

The Wives, performed in staged reading in Jackson, MS, at Fondren Workshop Theater, 2004.

The Wives, performed in Jackson, MS, at Fondren Workshop Theater, 2005.

Also author of A Visit with Mrs. Jemison, performed at various venues, 2001.

WORK IN PROGRESS:

Revising The Wives, a play; as-yet untitled Christmas anthology for Algonquin of Chappel Hill.

SIDELIGHTS:

Judy H. Tucker told CA: "I've got the writer gene. When it's located, that gene will probably lie close to the obsessive/compulsive gene. And if you have those genes, there's little you can do to fight the urge to write down your thoughts and fantasies, as well as the minutiae of your daily life. All those diarists, today's bloggers and memoirists, the serial novelists—well, they've got the gene, as do I. One of my earliest memories is of taking a pencil and scribbling on the rough, gray cypress walls of my grandmother's house. I did not know the alphabet then, but still I had the urge to write.

"Unfortunately for me, I also inherited the pessimism gene which is hard by the depression gene, so, for the first forty-five years of my life, I thought there was no use trying to publish, because the whole world is stacked, don't you know, against a poor farm girl from Mississippi without the benefit of a university education. So I hid my writing—stories, poems, essays, books even—in a box under the bed and went about my job of being wife and mother, a job for which, I'm afraid, I was ill-suited, as I got neither the cooking gene nor the ironing gene.

"My genetic makeup suits me best for working crossword puzzles and reading. You need to be compulsive to work the Saturday New York Timespuzzle. It takes tenacity to find the right word; and furthermore, I think the writing gene mutated from the reading gene. My family had no writers, though they were readers from way back. My 102-year-old great-aunt loves to tell me that she remembers how my grandfather would hitch up his mule to go to the field to plow the corn, only to be seen an hour later sitting under the apple tree reading a book, while the mule nibbled on the newly sprouted corn.

"I also got the dirt-loving gene which develops in people bred, born, and raised on a piece of Southern soil. Our farm has been in the Hall family for almost 200 years. We're the only people ever to hold deed to it, and God willing, we'll hold on to it forever.

"I've been able to fuse those two strong, deep-seated passions, the love for the land and the need to write. It took a fortunate genetic confluence for me to get my work into print. The compulsion to write down my impressions of life as it was molded by the farm, the almost desperate need to communicate them through the printed word: these things fit hand-in-glove with the tenacity it took to find a publisher. And I may add, I was fifty years old before I had the courage to try."