Greg Iles, Mississippi author of ‘Natchez Burning’ trilogy, dies of cancer at 65
Advertisement
Read this article for free:
or
Already have an account? Log in here »
To continue reading, please subscribe:
Monthly Digital Subscription
$0 for the first 4 weeks*
- Enjoy unlimited reading on winnipegfreepress.com
- Read the E-Edition, our digital replica newspaper
- Access News Break, our award-winning app
- Play interactive puzzles
*No charge for 4 weeks then price increases to the regular rate of $19.00 plus GST every four weeks. Offer available to new and qualified returning subscribers only. Cancel any time.
Monthly Digital Subscription
$4.75/week*
- Enjoy unlimited reading on winnipegfreepress.com
- Read the E-Edition, our digital replica newspaper
- Access News Break, our award-winning app
- Play interactive puzzles
*Billed as $19 plus GST every four weeks. Cancel any time.
To continue reading, please subscribe:
Add Free Press access to your Brandon Sun subscription for only an additional
$1 for the first 4 weeks*
*Your next subscription payment will increase by $1.00 and you will be charged $16.99 plus GST for four weeks. After four weeks, your payment will increase to $23.99 plus GST every four weeks.
Read unlimited articles for free today:
or
Already have an account? Log in here »
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Greg Iles, the Mississippi author of the “Natchez Burning” trilogy and other works, has died. He was 65.
Iles died Friday after a decades-long battle with the blood cancer multiple myeloma, his literary agent Dan Conaway posted Saturday on Facebook.
Initially diagnosed with the incurable condition in 1996, he kept his illness private until completing his final novel, “Southern Man,” which was published in 2024.
Iles was born in Germany but moved to Natchez, Mississippi, with his family when he was just three years old and developed a deep connection with the region. Many of his stories are set in Mississippi, including the “Natchez Burning” trilogy, historical fiction suspense novels exploring race and class in the 1960s Jim Crow South.
Conaway described Iles as “warm, funny, fearless, and completely sui generis.”
“To be on the other end of the phone as he talked through character and plot, problem-solving on the fly, was to be witness to genius at work, plain and simple,” he wrote on Saturday. “As a writer he fused story-craft, bone-deep humanity, and a growing sense of moral and political responsibility with the ferocious precisions of a whirling dervish or a master watchmaker.”
In March 2011, Iles suffered a ruptured aorta and a partial leg amputation and spent eight days in a medically induced coma after another driver struck his car on Highway 61 near Natchez. He eventually recovered.
Iles performed with the musical group The Rock Bottom Remainders along with popular authors Stephen King, Amy Tan and others.