Georgia Authors
Terry Kay
Even though Terry Kay has found his place in Georgia literature as a classic author he’s alive and writing today. His first novel The Year the Lights Came On, published in 1976 is based on Mr. Kay’s memories of growing up in rural Georgia and how the community reacted to the advancement of electrical power. His most famous novel is To Dance with the White Dog that is believed by many to be one of the most touching and inspirational books of all time.
Terry Kay has won numerous awards and received more recognitions than can be named in this concise review. To learn about the South and to experience a truly remarkable author read anything by Terry Kay.
You can see Terry Kay at the Suwanee Festival of Books in August 2010. |
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Margaret Mitchell
 No one can think of the South very long without thinking about Gone With the Wind by Georgia writer and Pulitzer Prize winner Margaret Mitchell. Ms. Mitchell was a modest lady and a true Southerner that understood the little things that make the South special. She died tragically in 1949 after being struck by a car. Her loss was mourned by Georgians and even today her name is spoken with reverence.
Today you can tour the Margaret Mitchell House in midtown Atlanta where Mitchell lived when she wrote Gone with the Wind.
Alice Walker
 Eatonton Native Alice Walker wrote the famous book The Color Purple
that has been adapted as a musical and a popular movie. Walker won the Pulitzer Prize for The Color Purple. She is also a renowned poet and activist. Walker attended Spelman College in Atlanta, but transferred to Sarah Lawrence College where she graduated in 1965.
Walker's first published work was in college, and The Color Purple was published in 1982. Other popular works by Walker include The Temple of My Familiar
and Possessing the Secret of Joy: A Novel
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Flannery O’Connor
Flannery O’Connor was one of the South’s most famous writers. She often wrote in the Southern Gothic style during her short life of just under forty years. Despite being ill with lupus for much of her life she was still a prolific writer producing two books of short stories and the novels Wise Blood and The Violent Bear It Away.
Ms. O’Connor never married and spent many of her years with her mother on her farm in Milledgeville, Georgia. She was progressive in many ways for the time and place she lived making a memorable mark on Southern literature.
Flannery O'Connor : Collected Works
Erskine Caldwell
 Caldwell was born in the small town of Moreland, just outside of Newnan, Georgia in 1903 but he spent much of his young life moving around various places in the South with his minister father. Caldwell published many works but he is best known for God's Little Acre and Tobacco Road .
Mr. Caldwell became a world traveler spending as much as six months out of each year in a different country. His works are known worldwide and had a profound impact on the plight of the poor laborer of the South.
Pat Conroy
 Conroy’s childhood under an abusive father drove many of the images and themes seen in his books. Especially his most famous work The Great Santini, that eventually helped change his father and heal their relationship. Other famous novels by Pat Conroy include The Lords of Discipline , The Prince of Tides , and Beach Music .
Many of Mr. Conroy’s novels are set in Georgia’s neighbor
South Carolina, especially in Charleston.
Many of his themes are dark as he uses writing as an outlet
to express deep internal pain. Conroy is a must read author
who is currently a South Carolinian but was born in Georgia
so we love to claim him as much and often as possible.
Joel Chandler Harris
If you didn't read the Tales of Uncle Remus as a child you missed out on a wonderful experience. Harris based his works on the oral stories passed down by African Americans.
The stories of Br'er Rabbit and friends are a must read for anyone wanting to understand the underlying psychology of race relations in the South in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. The stories hold lessons that can apply to anyone in any generation but are especially important to the South.
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