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Since the end of World War II, the South has experienced a greater awareness of growth and of its accompanying tensions than other regions of the United States. The rapid change that climaxed with the war in Vietnam, the Cold War, civil rights demonstrations, and Watergate has forced the traditional South to come to terms with social upheaval. As the essays collected in Southern Writers at Century's End point out, southern writing: since 1975 reflects the confusion and violence that have characterized late-twentieth-century public culture.

These essays consider the work of twenty-one of the foremost southern writers whose most important fiction has appeared in the last quarter of this century. As the region's contemporary writers have begun to gain a wide audience, critics have begun to distinguish what Hugh Holman has called "the fresh, the vital, and the new" in southern literary culture. Southern Writers at Century's End is the first volume to take an extensive look at the current generation of southern writers.

Authors considered include: James Lee Burke, Fred Chappell, Robert Drake, Andre Dubus, Clyde Edgerton, Richard Ford, Kaye Gibbons, John Grisham, Barry Hannah, Mary Hood, Josephine Humphreys, Randall Kenan, Richard Marius, Bobbie Ann Mason, Cormac McCarthy, Tim McLaurin, T.R. Pearson, Lee Smith, Anne Tyle,r Alice Walker, and James Wilcox.

Jeffrey J. Folks is professor of literature at Miyazaki International College in Japan.

James A. Perkins is professor of English at Westminster College in Pennsylvania.

"From the important foreword by James H. Justus through the introduction by the editors and 21 essays, this volume makes several crucial points."—American Literary Scholarship

"Those familiar with southern writing, as a genre, will be enlightened; those wary of the label 'southern' will find stereotypes obliterated."—Choice

"A valuable contribution to the study of contemporary southern fiction, with essays on writers little studied to this point."—Fred Hobson, University of North Carolina

"As a group they give testimony to the current healthy state of southern literature and to its promising future."—North Carolina Historical Review

"A sensible and authoritative introduction to the latest chapter in the continuing history of Southern literature."—Richmond Times-Dispatch

"One closes this volume with a strong sense that southern writing continues to flourish."—Southern Review

"A helpful guide to established writers and an welcome introduction to some of the younger practitioners."—The State (Columbia, SC)

Publication Date

1997

Publisher

The University Press of Kentucky

Place of Publication

Lexington, KY

ISBN

9780813120324

eISBN

9780813157269

Keywords

Southern literature, Southern identity, American literature

Disciplines

Literature in English, North America

Notes

Foreword by James H. Justus

Southern Writers at Century's End
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