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Melany Neilson (born Moses Lake, Washington, December 1, 1958) is an American author. She grew up in Ebenezer, Mississippi, and graduated from the University of Mississippi with a degree in English in 1979, and a Masters degree in journalism in 1986.

Her first book, Even Mississippi, a memoir of Southern politics, was published in 1989, and received the Lillian Smith Award, the Mississippi Authors Award, the Gustavas Myers Outstanding Book on Human Rights, and a nomination for the Pulitzer Prize.

Her first novel, The Persia Café, was published in 2001 to wide praise.[1] The story of a race murder set in a small Mississippi River town in 1962, the novel explores identity, friendship, family, community and race in a turbulent time in American history.

Neilson is married to Frederick G. Slabach, Executive Secretary of the Truman Scholarship Foundation and former Dean of the Texas Wesleyan University School of Law in Fort Worth, Texas. They have three children.

This author page uses material from the Wikipedia article "Melany Neilson", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0