This Issue

Abstract

This Issue George Brosi Cormac McCarthy, the winner of both a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award, is one of a mere handful of contemporary American authors with a secure international reputation. He also must be considered a strong force in Appalachian literature, because he lived most of his life until he was in his forties in East Tennessee, three of his novels are clearly set in the area, and two more rely heavily on East Tennessee settings. Cormac McCarthy is also a man who closely guards his privacy and eschews literary entanglements. For us to ignore him would be shameful, but in order to include him we had to break some precedents. Cormac McCarthy has not been directly involved in this issue. I told his brother, Dennis, about our plans last April, and we have remained in touch. To create this issue, we have assembled a team of leading McCarthy critics. Rick Wallach, a life-long Florida resident, is our guest editor. Chris Walsh is a British scholar, and Peter Josyph is a New Yorker. Wes Morgan has been a professor at the University of Tennessee for decades. Jack Neely is a Knoxville native and one of Knoxville's most distinguished writers and journalists. Beyond our author feature, we have put together what we think is an outstanding issue, headlined by Charles Wright, the Pulitzer-Prize- winning poet who grew up in Tennessee and was a professor at the University of Virginia for most of his academic career. Fred Chappell is from Canton, North Carolina, and is retired from an amazing tenure at UNC-Greensboro. David Huddle grew up in Ivanhoe in Southwestern Virginia but enjoyed a distinguished academic career at the University of Vermont and now is a visiting professor at Hollins University. Jane Sasser teaches at Oak Ridge High School in Tennessee, and Bianca Spriggs is an independent writing teacher living in Lexington. All five of these poets have appeared in this magazine before. Our two new poets are the distinguished author of children's books, William Miller, a native of Anniston, Alabama, and Jason Williams, a native of Catlettsburg, Kentucky, who teaches high school. Our story writer is Gurney Norman, the poet laureate of Kentucky, and our essayist for this issue is Anne Shelby, another Kentuckian and the person most recently honored at the annual Literary Festival at Emory & Henry College. Our book reviewers are Sylvia Lynch and Marianne Worthington. [End Page 10] Copyright © 2010 Berea College