Minrose Gwin grew up in a segregated Mississippi town much like the one she wrote about in her debut novel “The Queen of Palmyra” (Harper Collins/2010) and like the book’s protagonist, she was disturbed by the willful ignorance of white people in her community who blinded themselves to the problems of racism and violence. Gwin, Kenan Eminent Professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, now makes her home in North Carolina where she continues to reveal the unspoken truths of Southern culture in her writing.