The Southern Literary Review states that the characteristics of Southern Literature are: the significance of family, a sense of community, the community’s dominating religion, land and the promise it brings, and the use of southern dialect. All these Southern Writers exhibit one or many of these traits. The true test is whether the reader feels as though he or she is sitting on a porch swing one hot summer evening while listening to a superb storyteller spin a yarn.

Wendell Berry has crossed this country teaching both at Stanford and New York University before returning to Henry County, Kentucky where he and his family live and work on the farm that has been in his family since 1800. It is not surprising that his novels focus on the fictional community of Port William, Kentucky, told in turn from the viewpoint of its residents, Andy Catlett, Hannah Coulter, Nathan Coulter, and Jayber Crow. This environmentalist, farmer, professor, poet, author and man of many talents teaches his readers about bonds between family members and the land which provides for each of them.

Compared to Mark Twain because of the lighthearted humor in his novels, Fred Chappell tells the story of the Kirkman family in the mountains of North Carolina. I Am One of You Forever is the coming of age story of Jess Kirkman and his active imagination. In Look Back All the Green Valley, Jess is an adult traversing the mountain roads and listening to the music of the hills as he tries to solve the riddle of his father’s secret life. Chappell has also been chosen poet laureate in his home state.

Born into a military family that moved frequently, Pat Conroy considers his high school residence, Beaufort, South Carolina his home. He credits his high school English teacher who gave him a copy of Thomas Wolfe’s Look Homeward Angel with his love of writing. Conroy’s books are tragically autobiographical, based on his memories and his journals. The Great Santini describes his father, The Lords of Discipline has its roots in his experiences at The Citadel, and The Prince of Tides is a representation of one of his sisters and their childhood. Conroy’s themes are broad and his writing highly respected.

Silas House emphasizes his Kentucky heritage in his novels. The Coal Tattoo and Clay’s Quilt acquaint the reader with traditional Appalachian families forced to merge with present day realities. Coal miners who frequent honky tonks in the hollows come alive in his writing. Featured on NPR, he is a member of a band composed of writers and activists who educate audiences about mountaintop removal mining.

Edward P. Jones was raised by an illiterate mother in Washington, DC. Despite this, he loved to read, excelled in school and won scholarships, finally resulting in an MFA from University of Virginia. He worked as a tax analyst for a non-profit firm, but was persistent with his writing and published a collection of stories about Washington, DC titled Lost In The City. He went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for The Known World, an historic novel about the all-encompassing evils of slavery. He has returned to the short story format in his latest publication, All Aunt Hagar’s Children.

Working for over ten years as a registered nurse in her homestate of Georgia, Sue Monk Kidd wrote in her journal on a daily basis and took writing classes that led to the publishing of many inspirational articles. The early influence of Thoreau and Kate Chopin, in combination with her later studies of Thomas Merton and Jung contributed to topics explored in her novels. Following The Secret Life of Bees, a book regarded as a modern classic, Kidd published The Mermaid Chair.

Barbara Kingsolver has taken the value of the land to new lengths in her nonfiction book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. She and her family are living on foods produced no more than 100 miles from their home in Virginia. Born in Kentucky, she is from small town roots reflected briefly in her first novel, The Bean Trees. In Appalachian Summer, she returns to the South with a cast of characters all tied to the land in various ways.

Frances Mayes was born in Georgia, but she is best known for her memoir of life in Tuscany. In Swan she reunites a young archeologist and her brother, a virtual hermit, as they attempt to discover the family secrets and incidents that led to their mother’s suicide nineteen years earlier. The unraveling of the story behind their mother’s mysterious death is hidden in plain sight by the southern mores in Swan, their small hometown in Georgia.

Although he grew up in Montana and worked as a copywriter in New York, Donald McCaig has lived in Virginia for over thirty years as a sheep farmer and writer. His early novels were mostly about dogs, but he has since produced Jacob’s Ladder, winner of the Michael Shaara Award for best Civil War novel. His latest publication, Rhett Butler’s People enlarges upon this character from the classic novel, Gone With the Wind.

Sharyn McCrumb says it best herself: “My books are like Appalachian quilts. I take brightly colored scraps of legends, ballads, fragments of rural life, and local tragedy, and I piece them together into a complex whole that tells not only a story, but also a deeper truth about the culture of the mountain South.” Her ballad novels include She Walks These Hills, The Songcatcher and others. More recently she has turned to writing about the popular Southern tradition of NASCAR in Once Around The Track and St. Dale.

Willie Morris did not consider himself a southern writer, but is quoted as saying, “I am an American writer who happens to have come from the South.” A Yazoo City, Mississippi boy, he graduated from the University of Texas, then became a Rhodes Scholar before launching his journalism career and becoming the youngest editor-in-chief of Harpers Magazine. He mentored John Grisham as writer-in-residence at the University of Mississippi. Some of his works include My Dog Skip, The Ghosts of Medgar Evers, and Taps. The latter is his novel of over thirty years work, and is loosely autobiographical as a coming-of-age story about a 16 year old boy who plays Taps for soldier’s funerals in a town resembling Yazoo City. It was published posthumously in 2001.

Anne Rivers Siddons began her writing career when this southern belle from Georgia was attending Auburn University in the 1950’s. She wrote editorials for the campus newspaper defending integration and found her career short-lived. Majoring in illustration, she returned to her earlier career as a writer for Atlanta Magazine. Since she divides her time between homes in the south and in Maine, she has written novels about both coastlines. Her most recent novels, Islands and Sweetwater Creek return to her southern roots and showcase her talent for evoking an appreciation for the coastal land and seascapes.

Lalita Tademy left her career as a corporate executive to tell of her family’s background. She is not from the South herself, but her rich writing style and exploration of her family’s heritage makes her an honorary Southern writer. Cane River tells the emotional story of four generations of her maternal ancestors who began as slaves in Louisiana. In Red River she delves into her father’s family history, opening in the period of Reconstruction in Colfax, Louisiana.