Virginia Sorensen

Virginia Louise Sorensen (née Eggertsen; February 17, 1912 – December 24, 1991), also credited as Virginia Sorenson, was an American regionalist writer. Her role in Utah and Mormon literature places her within the "lost generation" of Mormon writers. She was awarded the 1957 Newbery Medal for her children's novel, Miracles on Maple Hill. Biography Virginia Sorensen was born on February 17, 1912, to Helen El Deva Blackett and Claud E. Eggertsen in Provo, Utah, but grew up in Manti and American Fork, Utah. Her parents were descended from Mormon pioneers; her mother identified as a Christian Scientist, while Sorensen described her father as a Jack Mormon. Because of this, she wrote from a liminal position between Mormon and mainstream western American life. Of this circumstance, she said of her siblings and herself, "We all felt obliged to be especially good and bright because our parents weren't active church people." From an early age, she wrote poetry and told stories to friends and family. She attended Brigham Young University, where she met her first husband, Frederick C. Sorensen, who taught English at a local high school. She graduated from BYU with a bachelor's degree in journalism. The couple moved several times throughout their 25 years of marriage for Frederick's work. While living in Terre Haute, Indiana, where Frederick was a professor at what is now Indiana State University, Sorensen published her first novel, A Little Lower Than the Angels. In 1954, Sorensen stayed at MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire, for an artist residency where she met Alec Waugh. Personal life Sorensen had two children with her first husband: Frederick Sorensen Jr. and Elizabeth Hepburn. In 1958 she divorced Frederick, and in 1969 married author Alec Waugh at the Rock of Gibraltar. She later converted to Anglicanism at Waugh's request. Sorensen and Waugh lived primarily in Morocco but moved back to the states when Alec's health began to fail in 1980. After Alec died, she moved to North Carolina, where she died on December 24, 1991, at the age of 79. Her ashes were buried in the Provo Cemetery, next to her mother and sister.