Bett Norris

 

Bett Norris, born and raised in Alabama a few short miles from the place where Harper Lee did the same, followed in the footsteps of her idol and inspiration by attending the University of Alabama, somehow managing to graduate with a degree in history and a burning desire to write. Real life intruded, but many years later, her first novel, Miss McGhee, a runnerup for the first annual Bywater prize for fiction, was published, a story set in the south during the decades of the civil rights movement. She dutifully set her second novel, What’s Best for Jane, in the South as well, certain that the well of rich material to be found there will never run dry.

Norris is currently working on a novel of historical fiction set in Montgomery during the years leading up to the beginning of the civil rights movement. She continues to use the South as source material and setting. “Almost everybody’s got a story about crazy relatives, mad dogs, good trucks, fishing, deer hunting, drinking, cussing, fighting, tent revivals, football, running around barefoot in the summers, better times in the past, and where the bootleggers live.”

She now lives in Florida with her partner Sandy Moore, an artist. Bett gets up every morning at an insanely early hour to write.

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