{"product_id":"9781611178760","title":"Southern Writers Bear Witness: Interviews","description":"\u003cb\u003eFourteen Southern storytellers reveal their influences, methods and daily routines, and struggles with the writing process\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cp\u003eJan Nordby Gretlund has been studying the literature of the American South for some fifty years, and his outsider's perspective as a European scholar has made him an intellectually acute witness of both the literature and its creators. Whether it is their language and reflexive storytelling or the craft and techniques by which writers transform life and experience into art that fascinates Gretlund, elements of their fiction led to his interviews with the fourteen storytellers featured in \u003ci\u003eSouthern Writers Bear Witness.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eGretlund believes a good interview will always reveal something about a writer's life and character, details that can inform a reading of that writer's fiction. The interviewer's task, according to Gretlund, is to supply the reader with some of the sources and experiences that inspired and shaped the fiction. Through his conversations Gretlund also occasionally elicits the subjects' reflections on other writers and their work to discover affiliations, lines of influence, and divergences, and he also emphasizes the enduring power of their work.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e His interviews with Eudora Welty and Pam Durban uncover strong family and community experiences found at the core of their fiction. Gretlund also turns conversations to the craft of writing, writers' daily routines, and specific problems encountered in their work, such as Clyde Edgerton's struggle with point of view. In other exchanges he investigates distinctive elements of a writer's work, such as violence in Barry Hannah's fiction and religious faith in Walker Percy's. Still other conversations, such as his with Josephine Humphreys, touch on the pressures and opportunities of publishing and its influence on the writer's work. Taken together, these authors' insights on life in the South provide a fascinating window into the creative process of storytelling as well as the human experiences that fuel it.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA foreword by Daniel Cross Turner, author of \u003ci\u003eSouthern Crossings: Poetry, Memory, and the Transcultural South\u003c\/i\u003e and co-editor of U\u003ci\u003endead Souths: The Gothic and Beyond in Southern Literature and Culture\u003c\/i\u003e and\u003ci\u003e Hard Lines: Rough South Poetry\u003c\/i\u003e, is also included.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFeatured Authors: \u003cbr\u003ePat Conroy\u003cbr\u003ePam Durban\u003cbr\u003eClyde Edgerton\u003cbr\u003ePercival Everett\u003cbr\u003eKaye Gibbons\u003cbr\u003eBarry Hannah\u003cbr\u003eMary Hood\u003cbr\u003eJosephine Humphreys\u003cbr\u003eMadison Jones\u003cbr\u003eMartin Luther King Sr.\u003cbr\u003eWalker Percy\u003cbr\u003eRon Rash\u003cbr\u003eDori Sanders\u003cbr\u003eEudora Welty\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"University of South Carolina Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47031587537136,"sku":"9781611178760","price":49.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781611178760_p0.jpg?v=1763841966","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781611178760","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}