Draft:Rebecca Moore Browder

• Comment: Quite a few bits are unsourced, i.e. education, date of death, living location, daughter, etc.
  Every statement must be sourced from a reliable published source. You can reuse sources. But if you can't find sources then the information must be removed. Qcne (talk) 21:17, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

• Comment: It would also be good if more of the article could be cited. BuySomeApples (talk) 19:14, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

---

Sara Rebecca Moore Browder (1947–2021) was an award-winning author and essayist whose published works include short stories, memoirs and biography. Her collection of creative nonfiction, Sorry Men in Southern Literature: 21 Original Short Stories, was published posthumously in 2023 by Home House Press. She was the wife of former U.S. Rep. Glen Browder, D-Alabama.

Her writing reflects sardonic memories of the foibles she observed in the people she met throughout her life, primarily in the rural South, but also in locales as distant from her childhood home as Russia and California. Her wry Southern humor and "grim" landscapes have been compared to those of Flannery O'Connor and William Gay.

She was a native of Clinton, South Carolina, and graduated from Clinton High School in 1966. She went on to earn Bachelor of Arts, Master of Public Administration and Master of Fine Arts degrees. She traveled extensively, visiting some 25 countries. She lived most of her adult life in Alabama and Washington, D.C.

Early Life

She was born Sara Rebecca Moore, the second of three daughters of Frank Thomas Moore and Audrey King Moore of Clinton. Growing up in poverty in a textile mill village, she dreamed of exotic places, often recording her thoughts on scraps of paper, napkins or the backs of envelopes. In her later life, she was able to travel widely and see some of the places she'd fantasized about as a child, but it was her small-town childhood that formed the settings for much of her writing. Her stories were often founded in memories of her experiences with family and acquaintances in Laurens County, South Carolina, in the 1940s-50s.

Although college tuition was beyond her means, it was on the campus of Presbyterian College in Clinton that she met her future husband. She was working as a secretary in the college administration building in the summer of 1966, and Glen Browder was working in the college's publicity department on the same floor. They married in February 1967 and lived in Atlanta, Georgia, where Glen worked as an investigator for the Civil Service Commission.

Thanks in large part to Becky's financial prowess, they saved enough money in the first year of their marriage for a shoestring-budget tour of Europe.They visited Iceland, Luxembourg, France, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, Monaco and Spain, and from Spain they crossed the Mediterranean into North Africa.

Soon after returning to Atlanta, Glen entered graduate school at Emory University. Becky supplemented his $300 monthly stipend by typing papers for other students. Pursuing her own degree became possible after Glen earned his Ph.D. and accepted a position as an assistant professor in the Political Science department at Jacksonville State University in Jacksonville, Alabama, in 1971. During the early 1970s, Becky worked as a stock broker while taking classes at JSU. She achieved a longtime goal of earning her bachelor's degree, in sociology, in 1974. Afterward, she taught finance at the university while working toward her master's degree. She attained the Master of Public Administration degree with concentrations in finance and criminal justice in 1978.

Their daughter, Jenny Rebecca, was born in 1975.

A Political Wife

Becky had been helping Glen in his sideline political consulting business for several years, and in 1980 they both won seats in Alabama's delegation to the Democratic National Convention. Attending the convention was the first step on Glen's political ladder, but it confirmed for Becky that she preferred the role of an avid supporter, not a candidate. During the following years of Glen's active political service, they traveled to many countries together and Becky continued to write, but she put aside any publishing ambition in favor of supporting her husband's career. After Glen lost his bid for a U.S. Senate seat in 1996, they reestablished a home base in Jacksonville, from which they continued traveling. Several of these places became settings for Becky's stories.

Writing Career

In the succeeding years, while Glen wrote extensively about politics and public policy, Becky began fleshing out her notes and ideas into short stories. She also began taking writing courses and participating in seminars and workshops to hone her skills. By the time she enrolled in the graduate creative writing program at Spalding University in Louisville, Kentucky, in 2006, her writing was winning awards. Her stories won or were finalists in a number of national literary contests, including ones sponsored by Writer's Digest, Glimmer Train, the John Steinbeck Short Fiction Awards, Permafrost Magazine, the Santa Barbara Writers Conference, the Pirate's Alley Faulkner Society, and the Association of Writers & Writing Programs.

She gained her Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing in 2012 from Spalding University's Naslund-Mann Graduate School, where she served as a student assistant editor for The Louisville Review.

Her first published work was "Scenes from California," in the Clackamas Literary Review, Clackamas Community College, in 2008. She would go on to have stories published in magazines and literary journals including The Clackamas Literary Review, Longleaf Style Magazine, The South Carolina Review, Big Muddy Review, and Reed Magazine. Her short stories were published in seven literary publications and magazines, gaining her 15 awards and recognitions, including a first-place win at the Santa Barbara Writers’ Conference competition in 2005 for her story, “Blue-Eyed Devil.”.

Over the course of her writing career, she developed a continuing theme that she described as "sorry men, foolish women, and lost children," as K.L. Cook, her professor and mentor at Spalding University's brief-residency MFA in Writing Program, wrote in the foreword to Sorry Men in Southern Literature. However, as reviewer Edward Journey notes, "Despite the title, there are heroic and stoic men and women interspersed throughout these stories."

After she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2019, she and Glen began compiling these stories for the collection that would be published after her death in 2021.

Publications

− Sorry Men in Southern Literature: 21 Original Short Stories (Home House Press, 2023).

− “The Unforgiving Year,” Another Chicago Magazine (2019).

− “Unconditional,” Longleaf Style Magazine (2014).

− “The Russian Bride,” Big Muddy Review: A Journal of the Mississippi River Valley, Southeast Missouri State University Press (2013).

− “Travels with Jesus the Cat Son of God,” Longleaf Style Magazine (2012).

− “Unconditional,” Big Muddy Review: A Journal of the Mississippi River Valley, Southeast Missouri State University Press (2011).

− “Chicky Babes,” Reed Magazine, San Jose State University (2010). − “Fishing the Yenisei” The South Carolina Review, Clemson University 2010).

− “Gypsies and Red Panties,” Longleaf Style Magazine 2009).

− “Scenes from California,” Clackamas Literary Review, Clackamas Community College (2008).

Awards/Recognition

− Writer’s Digest Annual Writing Competition, Memoir, Second Place, “Watermelons and Rita Gram” (2016).

− Writer’s Digest Annual Writing Competition, Memoir, “Lilly” (2009), among top 100 entries.

− Writer’s Digest Annual Writing Competition, Memoir, Third Place, “Watermelons” (2008).

− Writer’s Digest Annual Writing Competition, Memoir, Honorable Mention, “Gypsies in Red Panties” (2004).

− William Faulkner-William Wisdom Short Story Competition, Finalist “Lifus Moon” (2016).

− William Faulkner-William Wisdom Short Story Competition, Short-Listed, “Unconditional” (2013).

− William Faulkner-William Wisdom Short Story Competition, Finalist “The Russian Bride” (2012).

− William Faulkner-William Wisdom Novel-in-Progress Competition, Finalist “Growing Watermelons” (2008).

− William Faulkner-William Wisdom Short Story Competition, Finalist “Billie and Me” (2008).

− William Faulkner-William Wisdom Short Story Competition, Short List, “Unconditional” (2005).

− William Faulkner-William Wisdom Short Story Competition, Finalist, “Three Wild Monkeys in Paradise” (2005).

− William Faulkner-William Wisdom Short Story Competition, Semi-Finalist, “Bear’s Corner” (2005).

− Glimmer Train’s Very Short Fiction Award, Honorable Mention, “Too Much Room” (2014).

− Glimmer Train’s Family Matters Competition, Finalist, “The Russian Bride” (2012).

− Glimmer Train’s Short Story Award for New Writers, Finalist, “Three Wild Monkeys in Paradise” (2006).

− John Steinbeck Short Fiction Award Competition, Second Place, “Chicky Babes” (2010).

− Midnight Sun Fiction Competition, Permafrost Magazine, Finalist, “Fishing the Yenisei” (2009).

− Fish Publishing’s Very Short Fiction Competition, Short List, “Man in Prison with Bad Teeth” (2005).

− Santa Barbara Writers Conference, Biography, First Place, “Blue-Eyed Devil” (2005).

− AWP Intros Fiction Competition, Nominee, “Three Wild Monkeys in Paradise” (2004).