Southern writers on writing / edited by Susan Cushman ; foreword by Alan Lightman.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Edwin B. Cole Memorial Fund.

Cushman, Susan, 1951- editor.

Lightman, Alan P., 1948- writer of foreword.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Authors, American.

American literature.

Southern States--Intellectual life--1865-.

Southern States.

Intellectual life.

Southern States--In literature.

American literature--Southern States--History and criticism.

American literature--21st century--History and criticism.

Authors, American--21st century.

Literature.

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Physical Description:

xx, 200 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Jackson : University Press of Mississippi, [2018]

Summary:

"The South is often misunderstood on the national stage, characterized by its struggles with poverty, education, and racism, yet the region has yielded an abundance of undeniably great literature. In Southern Writers on Writing, Susan Cushman collects twenty-six writers from across the South whose work celebrates southern culture and shapes the landscape of contemporary Southern literature. Contributors hail from Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Tennessee, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, and Florida. Contributors like Lee Smith, Michael Farris Smith, W. Ralph Eubanks, and Harrison Scott Key, among others, explore issues like, race, politics, and family and the apex of those issues colliding. It discusses landscapes, voices in the South and how writers write. The anthology is divided into six sections, including "Becoming a Writer"; "Becoming a Southern Writer"; "Place, Politics, People"; "Writing about Race"; "The Craft of Writing"; and "A Little Help from My Friends"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Introduction / Susan Cushman

I. Becoming a Writer: Off the deep end / Jim Dees ; Consider kudzu / Joe Formichella ; The meek shall inherit the memoir: then and now / Harrison Scott Key ; The ghost of Josiah King / Cassandra King ; The agoraphobic writer / Corey Mesler

II. Becoming a Southern Writer: What happens next / Patti Callahan Henry ; Stardust: an essay on voice in four parts / Sonja Livingston ; How I became a Southerner / Sally Palmer Thomason

III. Place, Politics, People: Southern fiction: a tool to stretch the soul and soften the heart / Julie Cantrell ; The burden of Southern literature / Katherine Clark ; In the land of cotton / John M. Floyd ; Where I write / Jennifer Horne ; That's what she said: the sordid business of writing / Suzanne Hudson with RP Saffire ; Dirt, death, and the divine: the roots of Southern writing / River Jordan ; A life in books from Dimestore: a writer's life / Lee Smith ; On the Baton Rouge floods of 2016 and my nostalgia for the half-gone / M.O. Walsh

IV. Writing About Race: The past is just another name for today / W. Ralph Eubanks ; Black countermelodies / Ravi Howard ; All that "Southern" jazz / Claude Wilkinson

V. On the Craft of Writing: "One things": an essay on writing fiction / Clyde Edgerton ; Capturing the essence of difference / Niles Reddick ; A woman explains how learning poetry is poetry and not magic made her a poet / Jacqueline Allen Trimble

VI. A Little Help From My Friends: Hard labor: the birth of a novelist / Susan Cushman ; Lyrical acts / Wendy Reed ; The necessity of writer friends / Nicole Seitz ; Keep truckin' / Michael Farris Smith.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Edwin B. Cole Memorial Fund.

Other Format:

Online version: Southern writers on writing.

ISBN:

9781496815002

1496815009

OCLC:

1010542394