Confessions of a Chronically Under-Read Southerner

I have never read a single word Eudora Welty, Zora Neale Hurston or Larry Brown have written. I have neglected them not out of regional pride – I hail from their part of the country – but out of my own misguided overemphasis on the works by the greats from other places. Similarly, my choice in reading material outside of classroom assignments tends to drift towards the general BIG NAMES IN WRITING, rather than the Barry Hannah’s and Daniel Woodrell’s of the world. Consider this blog a progression of amends-making, a gigantic love-letter to the fantastic writers from this God-blessed and godforsaken region within which I have spent these twenty-six years. The forthcoming post will include remarks and musin’s on Clyde Edgerton’s first novel Raney and my own torrid Baptist upbringing. I read the book because I heard it made some Baptists angry, which is never a bad or unfunny thing.