Contributions by Destiny O. Birdsong, Jean W. Cash, Kevin Catalano, Amanda Dean Freeman, David Gates, Richard Gaughran, Rebecca Godwin, Joan Wylie Hall, Dixon Hearne, Phillip Howerton, Emily D. Langhorne, Shawn E. Miller, Melody Pritchard, Nick Ripatrazone, Bes Stark Spangler, Scott Hamilton Suter, Melanie Benson Taylor, Jay Varner, and Scott D. Yarbrough Twenty-First-Century Southern Writers: New Voices, New Perspectives, an anthology of critical essays, introduces a new group of fiction writers from the American South. These fresh voices, like their twentieth-century predecessors, examine what it means to be a southerner in the modern world. These writers' works cover wide-ranging subjects and themes: the history of the region, the continued problems of the working-class South, the racial divisions that have continued, the violence of the modern world, and the difficulties of establishing a spiritual identity in a modern context. The approaches and styles vary from writer to writer, with realistic, place-centered description as the foundation of many of their works. They have also created new perspectives regarding point of view, and some have moved toward the inclusion of ""magic realism"" and even science fiction in their work. The nineteen essays in Twenty-First-Century Southern Writers feature a handful of fiction writers who are already well known, such as National Book Award-winner Jesmyn Ward, Tayari Jones, Michael Farris Smith, and Inman Majors. Others deserve greater recognition, and, in many cases, works in this anthology will be the first pieces of analysis dedicated to writers and their work. Twenty-First-Century Southern Writers aims to alert scholars of southern literature, as well as the reading public, to an exciting and varied group of writers, while laying a foundation for future examination of these works.

A critical companion to the striking variety of contemporary southern literature. Contributions by Barbara Bennett, Thomas AErvold Bjerre, Erik Bledsoe, Linda Byrd Cook, Thomas E. Dasher, Robert Donahoo, Peter Farris, Richard Gaughran, William Giraldi, Rebecca Godwin, Joan Wylie Hall, Marcus Hamilton, Gary Hawkins, David K. Jeffrey, Emily Langhorne, Shawn E. Miller, Wade Newhouse, L. Lamar Nisly, bes Stark Spangler, Joe Samuel Starnes, and Scott Hamilton Suter. Essays in Rough South, Rural South describe and discuss the work of southern writers who began their careers in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. They fall into two categories. Some, born into the working class, strove to become writers and learned without benefit of higher education, such writers as Larry Brown and William Gay. Others came from lower- or middle-class backgrounds and became writers through practice and education: Dorothy Allison, Tom Franklin, Tim Gautreaux, Clyde Edgerton, Kaye Gibbons, Silas House, Jill McCorkle, Chris Offutt, Ron Rash, Lee Smith, Brad Watson, Daniel Woodrell, and Steve Yarbrough. Their twenty-first-century colleagues are Wiley Cash, Peter Farris, Skip Horack, Michael Farris Smith, Barb Johnson, and Jesmyn Ward. In his seminal article, Erik Bledsoe distinguishes Rough South writers from such writers as William Faulkner and Erskine Caldwell. Younger writers who followed Harry Crews were born into and write about the Rough South. These writers undercut stereotypes, forcing readers to see the working poor differently. The next pieces begin with those on Crews and Cormac McCarthy, major influences on an entire generation. Later essays address members of both groups--the self-educated and the college-educated. Both groups share a clear understanding of the value of working-class southerners. Nearly all of the writers hold a reverence for the South's landscape and its inhabitants as well as an affinity for realistic depictions of setting and characters.

Contributions by Destiny O. Birdsong, Jean W. Cash, Kevin Catalano, Amanda Dean Freeman, David Gates, Richard Gaughran, Rebecca Godwin, Joan Wylie Hall, Dixon Hearne, Phillip Howerton, Emily D. Langhorne, Shawn E. Miller, Melody Pritchard, Nick Ripatrazone, Bes Stark Spangler, Scott Hamilton Suter, Melanie Benson Taylor, Jay Varner, and Scott D. Yarbrough Twenty-First-Century Southern Writers: New Voices, New Perspectives, an anthology of critical essays, introduces a new group of fiction writers from the American South. These fresh voices, like their twentieth-century predecessors, examine what it means to be a southerner in the modern world. These writers' works cover wide-ranging subjects and themes: the history of the region, the continued problems of the working-class South, the racial divisions that have continued, the violence of the modern world, and the difficulties of establishing a spiritual identity in a modern context. The approaches and styles vary from writer to writer, with realistic, place-centered description as the foundation of many of their works. They have also created new perspectives regarding point of view, and some have moved toward the inclusion of ""magic realism"" and even science fiction in their work. The nineteen essays in Twenty-First-Century Southern Writers feature a handful of fiction writers who are already well known, such as National Book Award-winner Jesmyn Ward, Tayari Jones, Michael Farris Smith, and Inman Majors. Others deserve greater recognition, and, in many cases, works in this anthology will be the first pieces of analysis dedicated to writers and their work. Twenty-First-Century Southern Writers aims to alert scholars of southern literature, as well as the reading public, to an exciting and varied group of writers, while laying a foundation for future examination of these works.

Essays in Rough South, Rural South describe and discuss the work of southern writers who began their careers in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. They fall into two categories. Some, born into the working class, strove to become writers and learned without benefit of higher education, such writers as Larry Brown and William Gay. Others came from lower- or middle-class backgrounds and became writers through practice and education: Dorothy Allison, Tom Franklin, Tim Gautreaux, Clyde Edgerton, Kaye Gibbons, Silas House, Jill McCorkle, Chris Offutt, Ron Rash, Lee Smith, Brad Watson, Daniel Woodrell, and Steve Yarbrough. Their twenty-first-century colleagues are Wiley Cash, Peter Farris, Skip Horack, Michael Farris Smith, Barb Johnson, and Jesmyn Ward. In his seminal article, Erik Bledsoe distinguishes Rough South writers from such writers as William Faulkner and Erskine Caldwell. Younger writers who followed Harry Crews were born into and write about the Rough South. These writers undercut stereotypes, forcing readers to see the working poor differently. The next pieces begin with those on Crews and Cormac McCarthy, major influences on an entire generation. Later essays address members of both groups - the self-educated and the college-educated. Both groups share a clear understanding of the value of working-class southerners. Nearly all of the writers hold a reverence for the South's landscape and its inhabitants as well as an affinity for realistic depictions of setting and characters.

With contributions from Robert G. Barrier, Robert Beuka, Thomas A rvold Bjerre, Jean W. Cash, Robert Donahoo, Richard Gaughran, Gary Hawkins, Darlin' Neal, Keith Perry, Katherine Powell, John A. Staunton, and Jay Watson

Larry Brown is noted for his subjects--rural life, poverty, war, and the working class--and his spare, gritty style. Brown's oeuvre spans several genres and includes acclaimed novels ("Dirty Work," "Joe," "Father and Son," "The Rabbit Factory," and "A Miracle of Catfish"), short story collections ("Facing the Music," "Big Bad Love"), memoir ("On Fire"), and essay collections ("Billy Ray's Farm"). At the time of his death, Brown (1951-2004) was considered to be one of the finest exemplars of minimalist, raw writing of the contemporary South.

"Larry Brown and the Blue-Collar South" considers the writer's full body of work, placing it in the contexts of southern literature, Mississippi writing, and literary work about the working class. Collectively, the essays explore such subjects as Brown's treatment of class politics, race and racism, the aftereffects of the Vietnam War on American culture, the evolution of the South from a plantation-based economy to a postindustrial one, and male-female relations. The role of Brown's mentors--Ellen Douglas and Barry Hannah--in shaping his work is discussed, as is Brown's connection to such writers as Harry Crews and Dorothy Allison. The volume is one of the first critical studies of a writer whose depth and influence mark him as one of the most well-regarded Mississippi authors.

Jean W. Cash is professor of English at James Madison University. She is the author of "Flannery O'Connor: A Life." Keith Perry is associate professor of English at Dalton State College and the author of "The Kingfish in Fiction: Huey P. Long and the Modern American Novel." Rick Bass is the author of novels and collections of nonfiction and short stories, most recently "The Lives of Rocks: Stories.""

Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964) ranks among the foremost writers of fiction in American literature. Her short stories, in particular, are considered models of the form. Born in Savannah, O'Connor spent most of her life in Georgia and infused her work with southern characters, themes, and landscapes. A devout Catholic, she addressed the mystery of God's grace in everyday life, often amid the grotesque, the shocking, and the violent. In this first full-length biography of the writer, Jean W. Cash draws upon extensive interviews with O'Connor's friends, relatives, teachers, and colleagues as well as on the writer's voluminous correspondence to provide a sensitive, balanced portrait of a fascinating woman. As Cash demonstrates, O'Connor's sheltered childhood, extraordinary intellect, spiritual certainty, and unique personality-including a wry sense of humor-combined not only to make her something of an outsider but also to foster her literary genius. As a child, her favorite activities were reading, writing stories, and drawing. Perhaps more unusual was her childhood feat of teaching a rooster to walk backwards. Her passion for exotic fowl later found expression in the peacock symbolism in her fiction. The family moved to Milledgeville, Georgia, in 1938, and there O'Connor attended high school and college. She left the South in 1945 and entered the graduate writing program at the University of Iowa, where she completed several chapters of her first novel, Wise Blood. She went on to live at the Yaddo writers' colony in Saratoga Springs, New York, and she might have spent her most creative years in the North if illness had not interfered. However, lupus-the same disease that had killed her father-forced her to return to Milledgeville, where she lived and wrote for the remaining fourteen years of her life under the protective care of her mother. The latter chapters of Cash's biography address O'Connor's adjustment to her debilitating illness and to a more circumscribed existence. As Cash explains, she learned to accommodate her mother's insular outlook, and in many ways her fiction profited artistically during this period. Her friendships and active correspondence added to the variety and vitality of her life. She also traveled widely on the lecture circuit and reviewed books for a local Catholic publication. Even in her illness and relative isolation in Milledgeville, O'Connor continued to live a richly rewarding and creative life. The Author: Jean W. Cash is professor of English at James Madison University.