This new edition of Southern Writers assumes its distinguished
predecessor's place as the essential reference on literary artists of
the American South. Broadly expanded and thoroughly revised, it boasts
604 entries-nearly double the earlier edition's-written by 264 scholars.
For every figure major and minor, from the venerable and canonical to
the fresh and innovative, a biographical sketch and chronological list
of published works provide comprehensive, concise, up-to-date
information. Here in one convenient source are the South's novelists and
short story writers, poets and dramatists, memoirists and essayists,
journalists, scholars, and biographers from the colonial period to the
twenty-first century.
What constitutes a "southern writer" is always a matter for debate.
Editors Joseph M. Flora and Amber Vogel have used a generous definition
that turns on having a significant connection to the region, in either a
personal or literary sense. New to this volume are younger writers who
have emerged in the quarter century since the dictionary's original
publication, as well as older talents previously unknown or
unacknowledged. For almost every writer found in the previous edition, a
new biography has been commissioned.
Drawn from the very best minds on southern literature and covering the
full spectrum of its practitioners, Southern Writers is an
indispensable reference book for anyone intrigued by the subject.
