Author: Mary Stanton Knight

Dear Hubert Creekmore: An Archival Search into the Life of a Queer Mississippi Writer examines the life of writer, translator, poet, painter, and trained classical pianist Hiram Hubert Creekmore, Jr. through archival research of collections donated by the author at three public institutions. The thesis explores the private relationships Creekmore had with literary and artistic figures from 1940-1966 and the silence surrounding LGBTQ archives to produce a more extensive biographical work on the author. Creekmore’s relationships with a variety of writers, composers, artists, and publishers is examined in order to discover his circle of friends as well as attempt to discover what his life was like as a gay man from Mississippi in post-World War II America. The second component of this thesis, the short documentary film Dear Hubert Creekmore explores the author’s ties to his childhood home of Water Valley, Mississippi in his novels and poems.

M.F.A. in Documentary Expression awarded in 2019

Trailer for documentary film (NOTE: as of this time, the filmmaker has not made the film publicly available)