“
The Fellowship of
southern Writers
“The Fellowship
shall exist to nurture
literature in the
American South through
recognizing distinguished
achievement. It shall
award prizes and
fellowships for significant
work by Southern authors
and it shall pursue other
activities that in the
judgment of the fellows
will serve to stimulate
Southern literary
endeavor of a
significant order
“
GEORGE WASHINGTON
HARRIS
Literary
Tennessee
Project •• MTSU
www.mtsu.edu/tnlitproj
By SHENAY NOLAN
The Fellowship of Southern Writers is a non-profit organization founded in 1987 by twenty-two writers, to commemorate,
encourage, and recognize as its mission. The organization has 50
members, and to become a member, a writer must be nominated
by a current member. The writer who is nominated has to have a
connection to the South in some way. The South has to be either
their birthplace, residence, or their writing must be set in the area.
Nominated writers mainly compose poetry, fiction, drama, criticism, and history.
The organization has hosted awards ceremonies every two
years in Chattanooga for the past seventeen years. During this
ceremony, writers are granted membership opportunities, awards,
and prizes for the quality of their writing. The event is called the
AEC Conference on Southern Literature because the of the organization’s affiliation with the Arts & Education Council.
Several award winners for verse have had their work published in Locales and Papers from the Fellowship of Southern Writers,
including Wendell Berry, Kelly Cherry, Fred Chappell, and many
others. Locales is a collection of exceptional poems with some settings associated with the South.
Another book published by the organization was The Cry of
an Occasion, a collection of short stories. Well-known writers are
accessible to people attending the conference for inspiring and
instructive conversations.
The friendly environment provides aspiring writers an opportunity to meet and get to know authors. The conference provides
the attendants with a one-of-a-kind experience. At the conference,
the writers have a book signing, talk about their most recent work,
and popular subjects. The conference is a three-day event where
more than 1,000 people from throughout the U.S. travel to Chattanooga to attend. They share an admiration of an author or their
piece of work. It is also an opportunity to connect with writers
who have the same interests. College students are able to attend at
a discounted price.
Many writers in the organization who have received awards
have a Tennessee connection:
Kate Daniels, author and associate professor at Vanderbilt University, was a winner of the 2011 Hanes Award for Poetry. Daniels
was born in Richmond, Virginia; She has taught at Vanderbilt for
15 years, and has four published books of poetry: The White Wave,
The Niobe Poems, Four Testimonies, and A Walk in Victoria’s Secret.
Tony Earley was named a Fellowship member in 2011. Earley
is a fiction writer and English Professor at Vanderbilt University.
He has received many other awards for his writings and has written four books: The Blue Star, Jim the Boy, Here We Are in Paradise,
and Somehow Form a Family. Some of his work has been published
in The New Yorker, Esquire, and many other publications.
Katori Hall is a playwright, performer, and author who won
the 2007 Bryan Family Foundation Award for Drama. Hall is from
Memphis, Tennessee, and graduated from Columbia University,
the A.R.T. at Harvard University, and Julliard. All of her plays are
set in her hometown of Memphis. The Mountaintop focuses on the
moments before Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. died. The play’s setting
is the Lorraine Motel where he was killed. The play was produced
on Broadway with actors Angela Bassett and Samuel L. Jackson.
Other plays by Hall are Hurt Village, Hoodoo Love, Remembrance,
and Saturday Night/Sunday Morning. Her plays show the struggles
and issues that African Americans face. Hall has had journalistic work published in many publications including The New York
Times, Essence, Newsweek, The Commercial Appeal, and The Boston
Globe. Hall currently lives in Washington Heights in New York
City. When she is not busy working, she spends her time relaxing,
reading magazines, and playing the guitar.
Madison Smartt Bell won the Robert Penn Warren Award for
Fiction in 1995. He has written fourteen books including, The Color
of Night, Barking Man, and Doctor Sleep. He helped Wyn Cooper
write the song “Forty Words for Fear.”Bell is originally from
Nashville, Tennessee, but currently lives in Baltimore, Maryland.
Bell received a scholarship at Princeton University and enrolled
in the creative writing program that was a little challenging for
him and decided to go back to his hometown of Nashville for a
semester. He found a job and wrote stories in his spare time. He
later returned to Princeton and graduated summa cum laude. He
also received four awards for his writing and has written a screenplay and two film projects. Bell is currently an English professor
at Goucher College and has been working there for twenty eight
years. As a professor, he has influenced some of his students to
become writers.
Jerre Dye is the recipient of the 2011 Bryan Family Foundation
Award for Drama. He is from Amory, Mississippi, and a graduate from the University of Memphis. Dye is multitalented and the
artistic director of Voices of the South, which is a production company. Some of the productions he has overseen and participated
in includes Sister Myotis and Pre-sent/Pre-sent. He also works as a
theatre teacher at the company in Memphis, Tennessee, and in his
spare time he enjoys reading books and listening to music.
Richard and Robert Bausch are identical twins who have won
the Hillsdale Award for Fiction. The brothers served in the military for several years and attended George Mason University.
Richard Bausch’s book, The Last Good Time, was adapted into a
motion picture. He taught at the University of Memphis where he
held The Moss Chair of Excellence, but resigned in 2012 to accept
TONY EARLEY
KATORI HALL
MADISON SMARTT BELL
ELIZABETH COX
JEFF DANIEL MARION
GEORGE SCARBROUGH
a position at Chapman University in Orange, California. Robert
Bausch teaches at Northern Virginia Community College and is
the director of the board of the Pen-Faulkner Foundation.
Elizabeth Cox won the Robert Penn Warren Award for Fiction.
Cox is from Chattanooga, and has written poetry, novels, and essay collections, including Familiar Ground, The Ragged Way People
Fall In and Out of Love, and Night Talk. Cox was inspired to write
poetry by her two brothers. One of her brothers is Coleman Barks,
a well-known poet. She received her M. F. A. from the University
of North Carolina at Greensboro. Cox’s southern roots are illustrated in her stories by writing about southern traditions. She has
taught at several universities including Duke University, for the
past seventeen years.
Pamela Duncan won the 2007 James Still Award for Writing
about the Appalachian South. Duncan is from North Carolina and
is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
and North Carolina State University. She has written three books:
Moon Women, Plant Life, and The Big Beautiful. North Carolina is
the setting for all of her stories. She currently lives in Cullowhee,
North Carolina, where she is a professor at Western Carolina
University and does workshops for writers at Lincoln Memorial
University in Harrogate, Tennessee.
Jeff Daniel Marion won the 2011 James Still Award for writing
about Appalachia. Marion is from Rogersville, Tennessee and has
written seven collections of poetry, four poetry chapbooks, and a
children’s book. Some of his books are Vigils: Selected Poems, Tight
Lines, Letters Home, Lost & Found, and, mostly recently, Father. His
poetry is available in more than 75 journals and anthologies. Not
only is Marion a skillful poet, he is a trained photographer and
printmaker as well. He currently lives in Knoxville, where he is
the Jack E. Reese Writer-in-Residence for the University of Tennessee Libraries.
The late George Scarbrough was a recipient of the James Still
Award. Scarbrough was from Patty, Tennessee, and wrote a novel
(A Summer Ago) and five collections of poetry. He attended Lincoln
Memorial University, and the University of the South. His poetry
collections: Tellico Blue, The Course is Upward, Summer So-Called,
New & Selected Poems, and the Pulitzer-nominated Invitation to Kim.
Wyatt Prunty became a member of the fellowship in 2005.
Prunty was born in Humbolt, Tennessee but grew up in Athens,
Georgia. He is a graduate of the University of the South, John
Hopkins University, and Louisiana State and served three years in
the Navy. He is the author of two books and eight poetry collections including The Lover’s Guide to Trapping, Unarmed and Dangerous, and Balance as Belief. Prunty founded the Sewanee Writers’
Conference. Prunty currently teaches at the University of the
South, where he is also the general editor of the Sewanee Writers’
Series and director of the Tennessee Williams Fellowship Program.
Will D. Campbell, a new fellowship member, is from Mr. Juliet,
Tennessee. Campbell is a Baptist minister, lecturer, public speaker,
award winning civil rights activist, and author. Some of his published works include Brother to a Dragonfly and The Glad River. He
attended Wake Forest College and Yale University.
Ann Patchett, a fellowship member, is the author of six books
including Bel Canto, Run, and State of Wonder. Time magazine
named her as one of the 100 most influential people in 2012. She
lives in Nashville where her bookstore, Panassus, is located.
Charles Wright, a fellowship member, is from Pickwick Dam,
Tennessee. Wright graduated from Davidson College, and served
four years in the army where he began reading and writing poetry. Some of his poetry collections are The Grave of the Right Hand,
Hard Freight, Country Music: Selected Early Poems, and Black Zodiac
which won the Pulitzer Prize. He is currently an English professor
at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.
Some of the elected members of the fellowship with a Tennessee connection include: George Core, editor for The Sewanee Review
for almost forty years. Core has edited two books, Southern Fiction
Today and A Place in American Fiction. He has also written several
books, including Writing from the Inside.
Allen Weir, Vice Chancellor of the Fellowship of Southern
Writers, won the 2007 Robert Penn Warren Award for Fiction.
Weir wrote Things About to Disappear, Blanco, Departing as Air, A
Place for Outlaws, and Tehano. He is an English professor at the
University of Tennessee in Knoxville, and enjoys traveling and
fishing. He is from San Antonio, Texas and graduated from Baylor
University, Louisiana State University, and Bowling Green State
University. Weir has been honored at the University of Tennessee
at Chattanooga where he also helped celebrate the life of George
Connor, a professor at the university. His work has been published in The New York Times, The Southern Review, and The Georgia
Review. He holds the Hodges’ Chair for Distinguished Teaching.
Andrew Lytle, a founding member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, is from Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and graduated from
Sewanee Military Academy and Vanderbilt University. His books
include Old Scratch in the Valley, The Long Night, and At the Moon’s
End. Lytle taught at the University of the South and was an editor
at The Sewanee Review.
Walter Sullivan, former Chancellor of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, wrote Sojourn of a Stranger, The Long, Long Love, and A
Time to Dance. Sullivan graduated from Vanderbilt University and
later taught there as well. He also graduated from the University
of Iowa where he received his M.F.A.
Peter Taylor was a charter member of the Fellowship. Taylor
was from Trenton, and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
Dr. Louis D. Rubin Jr., founder and past Chancellor of the
Fellowship of Southern Writers, said, “The conference is without a doubt the leading literary event in the South. It draws visitors not only from throughout the region but from all over the
United States. To be invited to take part is an honor coveted by the
South’s leading authors.”
WILL D. CAMPBELL
ANN PATCHETT
ANDREW LYTLE