Dr. Gerald Lucas, English professor at Middle Georgia State University (MGA), has been granted a month-long research fellowship at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas, Austin. His project is on Norman Mailer's short fiction archived from the late 1940s and '50s.

Lucas recently co-edited and published "Lipton's: A Marijuana Journal," written by Mailer in the winter of 1954-55 while he was trying to get his third novel, "The Deer Park," published.

Mailer was a leading public intellectual dating from the 1960s. The author of more than 40 books, he was one of the most prolific American authors of the 20th century. "The Castle in the Forest," his last novel, was the 11th of his books to appear on the New York Times bestseller list. His first novel, "The Naked and the Dead," which was on the Times list for 63 weeks, is considered to be the premier novel of World War II in the Pacific and has never gone out of print.

Lucas joined MGA's faculty in 2002. He earned his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D from the University of South Florida.