Description

A native of Fairhope, Alabama, Foster is professor emerita at the University of Iowa’s MFA Program in Nonfiction, where she taught for twenty-five years. Foster was recently selected as the 2026 Alabama Truman Capote Prize winner which will be presented at the Monroeville Literary Festival to recognize her as Alabama's Distinguished Writer of Literary Non-Fiction or Short Story. She is also the 2025 recipient of the Hall-Waters Prize from Troy University - presented regularly to a person who has made significant contributions to Southern heritage and culture in history, literature or the arts. 

Foster is the author of eight books, including All the Lost Girls (PEN Award), Just beneath My Skin, Girl from Soldier Creek (SFA Novel Award), Written in the Sky: Lessons of a Southern Daughter (Hall-Waters Prize for Distinguished Southern Writing), and a forthcoming memoir. She is the editor of four anthologies, including Minding the Body: Women Writers on Body and Soul. She has received a Pushcart Prize, a Clarence Cason Award, a Theodore Hoepfner Award, a Dean’s Scholar Award, a Florida Arts Council Award, a Yaddo Fellowship, a Carl Klaus Teaching Award, and was a juror for the Windham-Campbell Literature Prize in Nonfiction (Yale University). 

The OLLI Brown Bag Series is free and open to the public. Guests are invited to bring a lunch to enjoy during the presentation.