Harris had known since childhood that he wanted to be a writer, and he has always been drawn to bold, profound works-among them, The Known World (Edward P.
“Nathan Harris is, plainly, one of the most exciting writers I’ve read in years,” says award-winning author Elizabeth McCracken, whose work has been published in the Best American Short Stories and the New York Times Magazine. The novel was longlisted for the Carnegie Medal for Excellence and the Booker Prize, one of the world’s most prestigious literary awards.
Published last March, The Sweetness of Water quickly became a New York Times bestseller and was declared “miraculous” by the Washington Post. It’s an Oprah’s Book Club pick and a recommendation on former president Barack Obama’s favorite books of 2021 list. Running parallel to their relationship is a forbidden romance between two Confederate soldiers, all set against the backdrop of a violent, prejudiced town. He credits Brown and the creative writing program for helping him commit to an epic undertaking that one reviewer described as “unwriting Gone with the Wind,” destroying phony representations of romanticism and race.īlending historical fiction and a cast of rich, complex characters, Harris tells the story of two freedmen and a Georgia farmer who forge an alliance that alters their lives forever. That flame became The Sweetness of Water, a novel of critical acclaim accentuated by the fact it is Harris’s first, written before he turned 30. Upon reading Harris’s early working pages, Brown knew he was holding something special. “I saw fantastic writing that was the beginning of a long project, and all I did was encourage him,” he says. “I could see flame there.” Following Brown’s advice, Harris-then an undergraduate English major-concentrated instead on the sweeping tale that was almost writing itself in his head: a Civil War-era story of slave brothers at the moment of the Emancipation Proclamation, an expansive account that pulled Harris into exploring the deep waters of race and racism, power, love, and homosexuality.
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