Arkansas-Raised "Genius" Poet Elegizes Her Friend And The Civil Rights Movement

By Eleanor Boudreau

Memphis, TN – Poet C.D. Wright is a MacArthur Foundation "genius grant" award winner. She grew up in rural Arkansas and went to college at the University of Memphis back when it was Memphis State. Her latest book One With Others takes place in and around her old stomping grounds during the Civil Rights Movement. The book tells the true story of Wright's friend Margaret McHugh. McHugh was a white homemaker from rural Arkansas who left her town, husband, and seven children to join a small band of black activists on a march from West Memphis to Little Rock. In the book Wright refers to her friend simply as "V."

One With Others was a finalist for the National Book Award.