Dorothy Shawhan
Dorothy Sample Shawhan, educator, leader, and writer, was born in
Tupelo in 1942 and grew up in Verona. She received degrees from Mississippi State College for Women, Louisiana State University, and
George Mason University. In 1981, she joined the faculty at Delta State University as an English and journalism professor and served as chair of the Division of Languages and Literature from 1991 to 2006.
She received many honors for excellence in teaching and writing, including Delta State's Kossman Teaching Award. Enlivened by a sense of humor and wild imagination, her stories could conjure up Faulkner's ghost or depict contemporary pilgrims telling tales on a trip to Memphis. In three carefully researched biographies, she retrieves the lives of lesser-known Mississippi women, and in her novel Lizzie she imagines the life of another. When Shawhan died in 2014, a former student said, “In her understated, thoughtful manner, she brought out the best in all of us.".