Category: Uncategorized

From The Gospel Singer

By Harry Crews
From the Winter 2011 Issue
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Harry Crews (1935–2012), born in Bacon County, was the author of nearly twenty novels, from The Gospel Singer (1968) to An American Family: The Baby with the Curious Markings (2006). His published nonfiction includes the first volume of his autobiography, A Childhood: The Biography of a Place (1978), and three essay collections. His papers are collected in the Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library at the University of Georgia; he was the subject of a special feature, including previously unpublished work and letters culled from that collection, in our Winter 2007 issue. Crews lived for decades in Gainesville, Florida, where he taught at the University of Florida. (Inducted in 2002)

Mouseskull

By Ann Pancake
From the Winter 2011 Issue
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Ann Pancake’s first novel, Strange As This Weather Has Been (2007), was one of Kirkus Review’s Top Ten Fiction Books of 2007, won the 2007 Weatherford Prize, and was a finalist for the 2008 Orion Book Award and the 2008 Washington State Book Award. Her collection of short stories, Given Ground (2001), won the 2000 Bakeless Prize, and she has also received a Whiting Award, a NEA fellowship, and a Pushcart Prize. Her fiction and essays have appeared in such journals and anthologies as Orion, The Georgia Review, Poets & Writers, and New Stories from the South: The Year’s Best. She teaches in the Rainier Writing Workshop, the low-residency MFA program at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington.

And After a Sweet Singing Fall Down

By Catherine Reid
From the Winter 2011 Issue
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Catherine Reid is the author of Coyote: Seeking the Hunter in Our Midst (Houghton Mifflin, 2004), and her essays have appeared in such journals as Massachusetts Review, Fourth Genre, Bellevue Literary Review, and Isotope: A Journal of Literary Nature and Science Writing. She directs the undergraduate creative writing program at Warren Wilson College, where she also teaches creative nonfiction and environmental writing.

In the Flesh

By Martha G. Wiseman
From the Winter 2011 Issue
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Martha Wiseman has been a theater student, a dancer and choreographer, an editor, and a bookseller. Her poetry has appeared in a variety of journals, and her long short story Double Vision (White Eagle Coffee Store Press, 2004) is available as a chapbook. She has published three previous essays in The Georgia Review. She teaches English and directs the writing center at Skidmore College.

Vigilance

By Natasha Trethewey
From the Fall 2012 Issue
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Natasha Trethewey served two terms as Poet Laureate of the United States (2012–2014). She is the author of four collections of poetry: Thrall (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012), Native Guard (2006)—for which she was awarded the 2007 Pulitzer Prize—Bellocq’s Ophelia (2002), and Domestic Work (2000). Her book of nonfiction, Beyond Katrina: A Meditation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, appeared in 2010 from the University of Georgia Press. She is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the NEA, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Beinecke Library at Yale, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard. A fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Trethewey is Robert W. Woodruff Professor of English and Creative Writing at Emory University.

From The Temple Bombing

By Melissa Fay Greene
From the Fall 2012 Issue
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Melissa Fay Greene (b. 1952) is the author of five books of nonfiction, variously translated into a total of fifteen languages: Praying for Sheetrock (1991), The Temple Bombing (1996), Last Man Out (2003), There Is No Me Without You: One Woman’s Odyssey to Rescue Africa’s Children (2006), and No Biking in the House Without a Helmet (Sarah Crichton Books, 2011). Praying for Sheetrock was named one of the top one hundred works of American journalism of the twentieth century by the New York University School of Journalism. She has been the recipient of two National Book Award citations, a National Book Critics Circle citation, the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award, the Southern Book Critics Circle Award, the ACLU National Civil Liberties Award, and other honors, and she holds an honorary doctorate from Emory University. Greene’s work has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, the Atlantic, Newsweek, Washington Post, LIFE, Elle, Redbook, the Wilson Quarterly, and other periodicals. She and her husband, defense attorney Don Samuel, live in Atlanta and are the parents of nine. (Inducted in 2011)

A Brief Account of the Adventures of My Appropriated Kinsman, Juan Ortiz, Indian Captive, Soldier, and Guide to General Hernando de Soto

By Judith Ortiz Cofer
From the Fall 2012 Issue
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Judith Ortiz Cofer (1952–2016), as a young girl, emigrated with her family from Puerto Rico to Paterson, New Jersey; when she was a teenager her family relocated to Augusta. Ortiz Cofer was the author of several novels, including If I Could Fly (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011), Call Me Maria (2004), and The Line of the Sun (1989); poetry collections such as A Love Story Beginning in Spanish (2005), Reaching for the Mainland (1995), and Terms of Survival (1987); a memoir, The Cruel Country (UGA Press, 2015); two essay collections, Lessons From a Writer’s Life (Heinemann Books, 2011) and Woman in Front of the Sun: On Becoming a Writer (2000); and many other works, including three children’s titles with Piñata Books / Arte Público Press—¡A Bailar! (2011), The Poet Upstairs (2012), and Animal Jamboree / La fiesta de los animales (2012). Ortiz Cofer’s work appeared in The Georgia Review, Southern Review, the Kenyon Review, Glamour, and many other periodicals, as well as in numerous textbooks and anthologies. Ortiz Cofer, who in 2010 was inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame, was the Regents’ and Franklin Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Georgia.

The Tip

By Philip Lee Williams
From the Fall 2012 Issue
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Philip Lee Williams (b. 1950) is the author of seventeen books, among them twelve novels, three works of nonfiction, and two volumes of poetry. His latest novel, Emerson’s Brother (Mercer University Press, 2012), is about the mentally challenged brother of Ralph Waldo Emerson; a thousand-page novel, The Divine Comics (2011), is a modern re-imagining and updating of Dante’s Divine Comedy; and The Flower Seeker: An Epic Poem of William Bartram (2010) was named Book of the Year by Books & Culture magazine. Williams’ books have been translated into Swedish, German, French, and Japanese and have appeared in large-print editions as well. A science writer and a teacher of creative writing at the University of Georgia for many years, Williams retired in 2012. He lives with his family in rural Oconee County, Georgia. (Inducted in 2010)

A Red Canoe & An Absence

By David Bottoms
From the Fall 2012 Issue
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David Bottoms (b. 1949) had his Shooting Rats at the Bibb County Dump (1980) selected by Robert Penn Warren for the Academy of American Poets’ Walt Whitman Award for best first book by an American poet. Bottoms has gone on to publish six more poetry collections, most recently We Almost Disappear (Copper Canyon Press, 2011), and two novels, Any Cold Jordan (1987) and Easter Weekend (1990). His work has appeared widely in journals and magazines such as the Paris Review, the New Yorker, the Atlantic, the Kenyon Review, and the New Republic, and his many honors include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, and an Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. From 2000 to 2012 he served as Georgia’s poet laureate. At Georgia State University, where Bottoms has taught for some thirty years, he is John B. and Elena Diaz-Verson Amos Distinguished Chair in English Letters. (Inducted in 2009)