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Margaret Britton Vaughn

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Margaret Britton Vaughn (born 1938 in Murfreesboro, Tennessee) is Tennessee's poet laureate.[1]

Vaughn is a long time resident of Bell Buckle, Tennessee and operates a store in the pictured downtown area.[1]

Personal life

Vaughn was born on July 16, 1938 in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.[2] Her father, Charles Britton Tomlinson, a fire fighter, died when Vaughn was 9 months old, and when Vaughn was four years old, her mother, brother, and her moved to Gulfport, Mississippi when her mother remarried.[3]  

Vaughn was christened in the Methodist church and raised in the Church of Christ, but she most recently has expressed practicing with the Episcopal Church. Many of her feelings of hypocrisy and unnecessary rules in the church have inspired her writing such as her book You're Laughing, Ain’t Ya, God?

Vaughn currently lives in Bell Buckle, Tennessee where she receives many visitors and individuals seeking mentorship, advice, and someone to talk about poetry with. These visitors have included Bill Moyers and Maya Angelou.[4] In recent years, Vaughn has overcome both kidney and breast cancer[3]

Vaughn is friends with country singer Loretta Lynn. They met through their mutual connection the Wilburn brothers in the 1960s and bonded over similar writing styles. Vaughn and Lynn collaborated throughout their careers, and in 2004, the song Miss Being Mrs. Lynn and Vaughn helped write was nominated for a Grammy.[3]

Career

Vaughn attended Perkinston Junior College and transferred to Mississippi Southern College, but she ultimately left this school without a degree in her senior year.[3] Twenty-five years later, she completed her degree at Middle Tennessee State University with a degree in theater.[5]

Cover art for Vaughn's The Light in The Kitchen Window

Vaughn has expressed that the talents of poetry are inherited and their pursuit inevitable. She herself gave up her career of seventeen years in advertising to pursue writing full time, to her family and friends’ dismay.[6] She began this transition by working in a newspaper to build her skills then fully committing to poetry. She is the only recipient of the Mark Twain fellowship from Elmira College. Her time in a place Mark Twain once lived in inspired her work, Foretasting Heaven: Conversations with Twain at Quarry Farm.

Vaughn describes her writing as communicating the experience of living in small towns. From a young age, she was inspired by and heavily influenced by country music and wrote poems and songs. She has also written plays performed at the numerous Tennessee theaters; her most famous play, I Wonder if Eleanor Roosevelt Ever Made a Quilt, was performed at the National Quilter's Convention.  

In 1995, the Tennessee state legislature selected Vaughn to be Tennessee's poet laureate citing many of the plays, collections, and books Vaughn wrote throughout her career and her performances and outreach throughout the state of Tennessee.[7] As poet laureate, Vaughn wrote Tennessee's bicentennial poem, inaugural poems for many Tennessee governors including current governor, Bill Lee, and a poem to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the US Air Force.

Bibliography

List of Vaughn's published Written Works[7]
Title Year Published Publisher Pages Notes
50 Years of Saturday Nights: (poems) as told by the Old Spry herself 1975 Magluce Publishing Company 52
Grand ole Saturday Nights 1990 Bell Buckle Press 96
Kin 1994 Iris Press 75
The light in the kitchen window: poems 1994 Iris Press 74
Acres that Grow Stones: poetry 1996 Bell Buckle Press 53
Southern Voices in Every Direction 1996 Bell Buckle Press 159 co-author: Su Ellen Alfred
Life's Down to Old Women's Shoes: poetry and personal essays 1997 Bell Buckle Press 61
Bell Buckle Biscuits: stories 1999 Bell Buckle Press 128
The Birthday Dolly 2000 Bell Buckle Press 47 co-authors: Carole Brown Knuth, Lucille Lundquist
Foretasting Heaven: talking to Twain at Quarry Farm 2002 Bell Buckle Press 55
America Showing her Colors in Black and White: poetry and photography 2002 Bell Buckle Press -
You're Laughing, ain't ya God? 2006 Bell Buckle Press 52
When Grown Ups Play Children's Games 2006 Bell Buckle Press 51
The Other Sun of God 2010 Bell Buckle Press 37
Mary Rebecca, Bubba, and Me 2010 Bell Buckle Press 89
Shades of Walter Inglis Anderson 2012 Bell Buckle Press 79 co-author: Carole Brown Knuth
Out of the Box 2015 Bell Buckle Press 72 co-authors: Carole Brown Knuth, Kory Wells

References

  1. ^ a b Margaret Britton Vaughn: Poet Laureate of Tennessee - 11/10/2002 - Chattanoogan.com
  2. ^ Faris, Maranda. "State's poet laureate recounts 'lifetime of stories'". The Jackson Sun. Retrieved 2019-10-26.
  3. ^ a b c d Murfreesboro Storytellers (March 2014-Margaret Britton Vaughn), retrieved 2019-10-26
  4. ^ Staff, T.-G.; Reports, Ap (2014-05-29). "Maggi and Maya: Local poet visited Angelou's home". Shelbyville Times-Gazette. Retrieved 2019-10-26.
  5. ^ "Words – A way of life". The Tennessee Magazine. 2015-10-01. Retrieved 2019-10-26.
  6. ^ "Education Update - Margaret Britton Vaughn, TN". www.educationupdate.com. Retrieved 2019-10-26.
  7. ^ a b Tennessee State, Legislature. House of Representatives Resolution No. 0133. State of Tennessee, 8 March 1995. http://www.legislature.state.tn.us/bills/99/Bill/HJR0133.PDF
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