Papers of Allen Wier (1978-1983 [Bulk: 1978]) documenting the life and career of the noted San Antonio, Texas-born American writer and creative writing educator at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, who was formerly married to the poet, Dara Wier [#1169.089], consisting of loose manuscript items relating to Wier, transferred from Stuart Wright Book Collection volumes, entitled Blanco & Things About to Disappear: A Novel and a Collection of Stories, by Allen Wier (1978); Blanco, by Allen Wier (1978); and Departing as Air, by Allen Wier (1983); including letters to Stuart Wright and Fred Chappell; also an inventory control card for Departing as Air (1983).
Wier has had a varied career. He worked as a yard clerk for the Kansas City Southern Railroad (1966-1967), and as a laborer for All-Tex Ranch Supply, in Waco, Texas (1967-1968). After graduating from Baylor, he worked as an instructor in English, Longwood College, in Farmville, Virginia (1970-1972); he was an assistant professor of English at Carnegie-Mellon University, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (1974-1975); assistant professor of English at Hollins College, Virginia (1975-1979); associate professor and later professor, at the University of Alabama, in Tuscaloosa (1980-1994), where he was director of the M.F.A. program in creative writing. Since 1994, he has been professor of English at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, where he is currently professor emeritus.
Wier is best known as an author for several works including his novel, Blanco (1978) and his collection of short stories, Things About to Disappear (1978). Among his other works is Departing as Air (1983). He is also known for having edited Walking on Water and Other Stories (1996) and Voicelust: Eight Contemporary Writers on Style (1985). His work has appeared in many anthologies and periodicals.
Wier has received a number of significant awards and honors, including the Robert Penn Warren Award for Fiction (1997) and the Texas Institute of Letters Award in Short Fiction (1980). In 2003, he was inducted into the Fellowship of Southern Writers; in 2008, he received the 27th John Dos Passos Prize for Literature.
He was formerly married to poet Dara Dixon Wier (#1169-089) from 1969 to 1983; in 1984, he married Donnie Holloway with whom he has one son.
Sources:
"Allen Wier Biography -University, Julia, Life, and Novel", by Celia M. Kingsbury (2017) [Biographical Sketch] JRank Articles. http://biography.jrank.org/pages/4833/Wier-Allen.html
"Allen Wier", by Celia M. Kingsbury (2017). [Biographical Sketch] Encyclopedia.com. http://www.encyclopedia.com/education/news-wires-white-papers-and-books/wier-allen
"Allen Wier" (2015) . [Biographical Sketch] Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Wier
"Allen Wier Professor Emeritus" (2017) [Website] University of Tennessee, Knoxville. https://english.utk.edu/people/allen-wier/
Author: Jonathan Dembo, 7/20/2015, 3/8/2017, 3/28/2017.
In the fall of 1966, Wright enrolled at Wake Forest University as a pre-med, history, German and music student. Wright earned a B.A. in German and music in 1970. As a graduate student at Wake Forest University, Wright focused his studies on Southern history and literature, his ambition being to build an authoritative Southern Studies collection for the university. He received a master's degree in Southern Studies in 1973 and a second master's degree in U.S. History in 1980. Additionally Wright holds a professional degree from England in a medically related field. It was while studying there that he became interested in Thomas Wolfe, the noted North Carolina native and novelist.
Following his graduation from Wake Forest, Wright began to develop his collections more systematically, acquiring many first editions of Southern writers. In 1976 he began teaching at Reynolda House, a Wake Forest University affiliate dedicated to the arts and arts education. Wright taught classes in American music as well as human anatomy for art students. In 1978 Wright became Lecturer in Education at Wake Forest University. During his 10 years teaching at Wake Forest University, Wright authored numerous works of Civil War and North Carolina history, and dozens of articles, bibliographies, essays and reviews on Southern literature and the writers whose papers he collected. In addition, he developed a strong interest in the writings of the English poet Donald Davie and the Minnesota-born poet Richard Eberhart, whose works he also collected.
At the same time, Wright also began a career as a publisher by starting Palaemon Press in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. By 1984, Palaemon Press had produced 316 titles, consisting mainly of broadsides and limited editions, of the poetry and essays of such Southern writers as A. R. Ammons, Fred Chappell, James Dickey, William Goyen, George Garrett, and Eudora Welty. He also built comprehensive collections and compiled book-length descriptive bibliographies of A.R. Ammons, Andrew Lytle, Reynolds Price, James Dickey, William Goyen, Walker Percy, Randall Jarrell, Peter Taylor, George Garrett, Richard Eberhart, and Donald Davie. As well as serving as editor of the contemporary literature section of the Bulletin of Bibliography throughout the 1980s, Wright also contributed pioneering checklists of the writings of Southern poets Henry Taylor, Charles Wright, and Robert Morgan. For Meckler Publishing he served as series editor for a number of book-length bibliographies and checklists. In recognition of these accomplishments, when he was just 32, Wright was elected to membership in New York's prestigious Grolier Club.
All of these works are represented in the Stuart Wright Collection. In his dealings with these various authors Wright made consistent efforts to acquire personal papers, letters and documents, photographs, manuscripts, drafts, proofs, and published materials to supplement his continuing activities as a purchaser of their works. In this way, Wright acquired perhaps a majority of his overall collection. Over the years a number of biographers used Wright's collection to aid their research. For example, James A. Grimshaw, Jr. used the collection extensively for his Robert Penn Warren: A Descriptive Bibliography, 1922-1979 published by the University Press of Virginia, in 1981 and Craig S. Abbott did so as well for John Crowe Ransom: A Descriptive Bibliography, published by Whitston Publishing Company, Inc. in 1999. Joseph Blotner also used the Wright collection in researching Robert Penn Warren: A Biography, published by Random House in 1997.
Nevertheless, from the mid- to late 1980s, Wright began to look for a permanent home for his collection, which he felt had grown too large and yet had been too little used. Unable to find a repository willing to accept the entire collection under suitable conditions, he sold a number of individual author collections to Vanderbilt University, Duke University, the University of Texas at Austin, and Emory University. It was not until 2010 that he reached agreement to house the remaining, and largest part of his collection at East Carolina University. The Stuart Wright Collection in the East Carolina Manuscript Collection of J.Y. Joyner Library includes 106 sub-collections of the papers of Southern American writers, illustrators, composers, and publishers. The related Stuart Wright Book Collection holds several thousand volumes by or about many of the same writers. Many of these volumes contain annotations, inscriptions, and insertions that reveal much about the authors in the collection and their relationships with one another. In 1998 Wright moved to England, and since 2001 he has resided in the medieval market town of Ludlow, in Shropshire.
Author: Jonathan Dembo, 11/2/2016
Stuart Wright Collection: Allen Wier Papers (#1169-103) are arranged in original order in a single series.
Series 1: Ludlow Addition #2 to the Stuart Wright Collection consist of loose manuscript items relating to Wier, transferred from Stuart Wright Book Collection volumes, entitled Blanco & Things About to Disappear: A Novel and a Collection of Stories, by Allen Wier (1978); Blanco, by Allen Wier (1978); and Departing as Air, by Allen Wier (1983); including letters to Stuart Wright and Fred Chappell; also an inventory control card for Departing as Air (1983).
Purchased from Stuart Wright, 7/20/2012
Processing, Preliminary inventory & Container List, by Jonathan Dembo, with the assistance of Nathaniel King, 2/26/2016, 10/3/3016; Final inventory by Jonathan Dembo, 10/3/2016, 3/8/2017; Finding aid by Jonathan Dembo, 10/3/2016; Biographical Sketch, by Jonathan Dembo, with the assistance of John Leche, 7/20/2015, 3/8/2017; Encoding revised by Jonathan Dembo, 3/8/2017.
Literary rights to specific documents are retained by the authors or their descendants in accordance with U.S. copyright law.
English