Mary Bucci Bush (born 1949) is an American author and a professor of English and creative writing at

California State University, Los Angeles California State University, Los Angeles (Cal State LA) is a public university in Los Angeles, California. It is part of the 23-campus California State University (CSU) system. Cal State LA offers 142 bachelor's degrees, 122 master's degrees, ...

. Bush won a

PEN A pen is a common writing instrument that applies ink to a surface, usually paper, for writing or drawing. Early pens such as reed pens, quill pens, dip pens and ruling pens held a small amount of ink on a nib or in a small void or cavity wh ...

/Nelson Algren award for her collection of short stories, ''A Place of Light'', in 1987; a

National Endowment for the Arts The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal ...

creative writing fellowship in 1995; and the Tillie Olsen Book Prize from the Working Class Studies Association for her novel, ''

Sweet Hope ''Sweet Hope'' (2011), an award-winning historical novel by Mary Bucci Bush, tells the story of Italian immigrants living in peonage on a Mississippi Delta cotton plantation in the early 1900s. It was inspired by the experiences of Bush's gra ...

'', in 2012.

Biography

She was born and raised in Canastota, New York. The family name was changed to Bush by American schoolteachers who had trouble pronouncing Bucci. After receiving a B.A. in English at the

State University of New York at Buffalo The State University of New York at Buffalo, commonly called the University at Buffalo (UB) and sometimes called SUNY Buffalo, is a public research university with campuses in Buffalo and Amherst, New York. The university was founded in 1846 ...

in 1972, Bush earned her M.A. and D.A. in creative writing at Syracuse University, where she studied under George P. Elliott and

Raymond Carver Raymond Clevie Carver Jr. (May 25, 1938 – August 2, 1988) was an American short story writer and poet. He contributed to the revitalization of the American short story during the 1980s. Early life Carver was born in Clatskanie, Oregon, a mil ...

. She taught at Syracuse University and

Hamilton College Hamilton College is a private liberal arts college in Clinton, Oneida County, New York. It was founded as Hamilton-Oneida Academy in 1793 and was chartered as Hamilton College in 1812 in honor of inaugural trustee Alexander Hamilton, following ...

. In 1984 she co-founded the Community Writers Project in Syracuse with fellow novelist Rachel Guido deVries. Her fiction has appeared in literary journals such as ''

Ploughshares ''Ploughshares'' is an American literary journal established in 1971 by DeWitt Henry and Peter O'Malley in The Plough and Stars, an Irish pub in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Since 1989, ''Ploughshares'' has been based at Emerson College in Bos ...

'', ''

The Missouri Review ''The Missouri Review'' is a literary magazine founded in 1978 by the University of Missouri. It publishes fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction quarterly. With its open submission policy, ''The Missouri Review'' receives 12,000 manuscripts ...

'', '' The Black Warrior Review'', and ''

Italian Americana ''Italian Americana'' is a biannual peer-reviewed academic journal covering studies on the Italian-American experience. It publishes history, fiction, memoirs, poetry, and reviews. The editor-in-chief is Carla A. Simonini ( Loyola University Chic ...

''; and in anthologies such as ''The Voices We Carry: Recent Italian American Women's Fiction'' (Guernica, 2007), ''Growing Up Ethnic in America'' (Penguin, 1999), and ''The Milk of Almonds: Italian American Women Writers on Food and Culture'' (Feminist Press at CUNY, 2017). Her most recent novel, ''Sweet Hope'' (Guernica Editions, 2011), tells the story of Italian and African-American families living and working together on a Mississippi Delta cotton plantation in the early 1900s. It was inspired by the experiences of Bush's grandmother, who worked on the

Sunnyside Plantation The Sunnyside Plantation was a former cotton plantation and is a historic site, located near Lake Village in Chicot County, Arkansas, in the Arkansas Delta region. Built as a cotton plantation in the Antebellum South, it was farmed using the f ...

in Arkansas as a child.

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Bush, Mary Bucci 20th-century American writers 20th-century American women writers 21st-century American writers 21st-century American women writers American writers of Italian descent Syracuse University alumni University at Buffalo alumni California State University, Los Angeles faculty People from Canastota, New York Living people 1949 births Hamilton College (New York) faculty