Teresa Nicholas is the author of The Mama Chronicles, winner of the 2022 Life Writing Award from the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters. Born and raised in Yazoo City, Mississippi, Nicholas graduated from the Yazoo City public schools and Swarthmore College. For nearly twenty years she was on the faculty of the Columbia Publishing Course at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. Previously she worked at Random House, Inc., where she was Vice President, Production for the Crown Publishing Group. She has written essays and articles for The Bitter Southerner, NPR’s Opinion Page, and Delta and Mississippi magazines, among others. Her other books include Buryin’ Daddy and Willie: A Biography of Willie Morris. She lives with her husband, the writer Gerard Helferich, in Jackson, Mississippi.
