Olympia Vernon was born May 22, 1973 in Bogalusa, Louisiana. She was raised in the small towns of Mt. Hermon, Louisiana, and Osyka, Mississippi, on the border between Mississippi and Louisiana. Her father, Fletcher Williams, Jr., graduated from the University of Mississippi. Olympia Vernon attended South Pike High School in Magnolia, Mississippi. She was the fourth of seven children. Originally, Vernon wanted a career in law enforcement and graduated from Southeastern Louisiana University with a B.A. in Criminal Justice in 1999. However, her English professors, William Dowie and Carole McAllister, encouraged her to write. In the fall of 1999, she went to Louisiana State University to pursue her Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing and received her M. F. A. in the spring of 2002. She twice was granted the Matt Clark Memorial Scholarship.
Logic by Olympia VernonVernon’s first novel Eden was written while she was in graduate school. It was nominated for the Robert O. Butler award in fiction in 2000. This critically-acclaimed novel won the 2004 Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She was the recipient of The College of Arts and Sciencess 2004 Alumnus of the Year. In May 2004 she published her second novel called Logic about a young girl named Logic Harris, a thirteen year old girl who has not been right in the head since she fell out of a tree in Mississippi. Logic is also got good reviews.
In 2005 Vernon received the Louisiana Governor’s Award for Professional Artist of the Year. In 2007-08 Vernon was the Hallie Ford Chair in Writing at Willamette University. In 2007, she won the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence for her third novel A Killing In This Town.
Currently, Vernon lives in Tangipahoa Parish and is the Writer-in-Residence at Southeastern Louisiana University.
