Lewis Nordan (August 23, 1939 – April 13, 2012) was an American writer. Nordan was born to Lemuel and Sara Bayles in Forest, Mississippi, grew up in Itta Bena, Mississippi. He received his B.A. at Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi, his M.A. in 1966 from Mississippi State University, and his PhD in 1973 from Auburn University in Alabama. After holding faculty positions at the University of Georgia and the University of Arkansas, he became in 1983 an assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh. In 1983, at age forty-five, Nordan published his first collection of stories, Welcome to the Arrow-Catcher Fair. The collection established him as a writer in the Southern tradition of William Faulkner, Erskine Caldwell, and Flannery O'Connor. It also established a place for Nordan's fi