Olive Ann Burns was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 writer from Georgia

Georgia (U.S. state)

Georgia is a state located in the southeastern United States. It was established in 1732, the last of the original Thirteen Colonies. The state is named after King George II of Great Britain. Georgia was the fourth state to ratify the United States Constitution, on January 2, 1788...

 best known for her single completed novel, Cold Sassy Tree

Cold Sassy Tree

Cold Sassy Tree is a 1984 novel by Olive Ann Burns. Set in the U.S. state of Georgia in the fictional town of Cold Sassy in 1906, it follows the life of a 14-year-old boy named Will Tweedy, and explores themes such as religion, death, and social taboos...

, published in 1984.

Background

Olive Ann Burns was born in Banks County, Georgia

Banks County, Georgia

Banks County is a county located in the U.S. state of Georgia. As of 2010, the population is 18,395. The county seat is Homer.-History:*The Georgia General Assembly passed legislation to create Banks County on February 1, 1859, from Franklin and Habersham Counties.*The county is named for Richard...

. Her father was a farmer but was forced to sell his farm in 1931 during the Great Depression

Great Depression

The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...

. The Burns family then moved to Commerce, Georgia

Commerce, Georgia

Commerce is a city in Jackson County, Georgia, United States. As of the 2010 census, the city had a population of 6,544.-Geography:Commerce is located at ....

. Burns attended Mercer University

Mercer University

Mercer University is an independent, private, coeducational university with a Baptist heritage located in the U.S. state of Georgia. Mercer is the only university of its size in the United States that offers programs in eleven diversified fields of study: liberal arts, business, education, music,...

, where she wrote for the college magazine. Her sophomore year she transferred to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is a public research university located in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States...

, where she majored in journalism.

Career

Burns worked for the Atlanta Journal and wrote under the pseudonym

Pseudonym

A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...

 "Amy Larkin". She married Andy Sparks, a fellow journalist. In 1971 Burns began writing down family stories as dictated by her parents. In 1975 she was diagnosed with lymphoma

Lymphoma

Lymphoma is a cancer in the lymphatic cells of the immune system. Typically, lymphomas present as a solid tumor of lymphoid cells. Treatment might involve chemotherapy and in some cases radiotherapy and/or bone marrow transplantation, and can be curable depending on the histology, type, and stage...

 and began to change the family stories into a novel that would later become Cold Sassy Tree. The novel was finally published eight years after it was begun, in 1984. Burns received so many letters pleading for a follow-up novel that she began writing Leaving Cold Sassy. Burns died of heart failure in 1990, at age 65, in a hospital in Atlanta, Georgia, before finishing the manuscript, and the uncompleted novel was published in 1992 along with her notes.

External links

• Olive Ann Burns, in The New Georgia Encyclopedia