Southern Selves

  The memoirist seek to capture not just a self but an entire world, and in this marvelous anthology thirty-one of the South's finest writers—writers like Kaye Gibbons and Reynolds Price, Eudora Welty and Harry Crews, Richard Wright and Dorothy Allison—make their intensely personal contributions to a vibrant collective picture of southern life.

In the hands of these superb artists, the South's rich tradition of storytelling is brilliantly revealed. Whether slave or master, intellectual or "redneck," each voice in this moving and unforgettable collection is proof that southern literature richly deserves its reputation for irreverent humor, exquisite language, a feeling for place, and an undying, often heartbreaking sense of the past.

 James Watkins was born in Memphis, Tennessee, and moved with his family to Nashville at age thirteen.  After obtaining a bachelor's degree at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, he attended graduate school at the University of Florida, where he earned his doctorate in 1995.  He and his wife and two sons currently live on the campus of Berry College in Rome, George, where he teaches southern and nineteenth-century American literature.