Anne Carsley

Anne Carsley is an essayist and romance writer who has published six books based on historical figures or events.

Born in 1935, she currently lives in Ridgeland, Mississippi. She received her B.A. from Millsaps College in 1957 and her M.A. in English from the University of Mississippi in 1959. The title of her M.A. thesis was "A Re-evaluation of the Novels of Sinclair Lewis."

For her nonfiction essays she has received awards from Millsaps College, the Southern Literary Festival, the Mississippi Arts Festival, and the Mississippi Commission on the Arts. She also received third prize in 1970 for a screenplay in a contest sponsored by the Mississippi Authority for Educational Television.

Her fiction deals with human lust, desire, and love. She takes her materials from historical figures or events. For example, Defiant Desire, which was published in 1983, is a story about Queen Mary Tudor in the 1550s, and This Triumphant Fire (1982) is about a girl who lost her family and home in the French Revolution. Her interest in archeology led her to set The Winged Lion (1981) in Sumer (modernday Iran) in 2350 B.A. and The Golden Savage (1984) in Crete in 1650 B.C.