Barry Hannah, 1942-2010

The great Mississippi writer Barry Hannah passed away yesterday at the age of 67. “Barry could somehow make the English sentence generous and unpredictable, yet still make wonderful sense, which for readers is thrilling. You never knew the source of the next word. But he seemed to command the short story form and the novel form and make those forms up newly for himself,” said friend Richard Ford. Hannah’s Airships is one of the last century’s greatest collections of short stories, and was a prominent influence on many of today’s writers, particularly George Saunders.