Fellowship of Southern Writers

The Fellowship of Southern Writers is a literary organization founded in 1987 in Chattanooga, Tennessee by 21 Southern writers and other literary luminaries. The group meets in every odd-numbered year, usually during the Chattanooga Arts & Education Council Conference on Southern Literature.

In 2007, the fellowship formalized its own structure, electing its first board of directors and hiring its first executive director, Susan Robinson.^[1]

Charter members

A.R. Ammons Cleanth Brooks Fred Chappell George Core James Dickey Ralph Ellison Horton Foote

Shelby Foote John Hope Franklin Ernest J. Gaines George Garrett Blyden Jackson Madison Jones Andrew Nelson Lytle

Walker Percy Reynolds Price Louis D. Rubin, Jr. Mary Lee Settle Lewis P. Simpson Elizabeth Spencer

William Styron Walter Sullivan Peter Taylor Robert Penn Warren Eudora Welty C. Vann Woodward

Elected members

Wendell Berry (1990) Ellen Douglas (Josephine Haxton) (1990) C. Eric Lincoln (1990) Romulus Linney (1990) Lee Smith (1993) Monroe Spears (1993) Charles Wright (1993) Doris Betts (1995) Marsha Norman (1995) James Applewhite (1997) Richard Bausch (1997) Clyde Edgerton (1997) Gail Godwin (1997) William Hoffman (1997)

Donald Justice (1997) Dave Smith (1997) Joseph Blotner (2001) Allan Gurganus (2001) Beth Henley (2001) Josephine Humphreys (2001) Bobbie Ann Mason (2001) Henry Taylor (2001) Madison Smartt Bell (2003) Kaye Gibbons (2003) Barry Hannah (2003) Yusef Komunyakaa (2003) Jill McCorkle (2003) John Shelton Reed (2003)

Ellen Bryant Voigt (2003) Allen Wier (2003) Larry Brown (2005)[2] Percival Everett (2005) Robert Morgan (2005) Lewis Nordan (2005) Sam Pickering (2005) Wyatt Prunty (2005) Dorothy Allison (2007) Roy Blount, Jr. (2007) Andrew Hudgins (2007) Randall Kenan (2007) Shannon Ravenel (2007) Alfred Uhry (2007)

Will D. Campbell (2009) Rita Dove (2009) Percival Everett (2009) Jim Grimsley (2009) Edward P. Jones (2009) Fred Hobson (2009) Rodney Jones (2009) Eleanor Ross Taylor (2009) Natasha Trethewey (2009) Al Young (2009) Tony Earley (2010) Claudia Emerson (2011) Steve Yarbrough(2015)[3]

Awards and honors

• The Hillsdale Prize for Fiction
• The Hanes Prize for Poetry
• The Robert Penn Warren Award for Fiction
• The Bryan Family Foundation Award for Drama
• The Cecil Woods, Jr. Prize for Non-Fiction
• The Fellowship's New Writing Award for Fiction
• The C. Vann Woodward-John Hope Franklin Prize for the Writing of Southern History
• The James Still Award for Writing About the Appalachian South
• The Fellowship's New Award for Poetry
• The Cleanth Brooks Medal for Distinguished Achievement in Southern Letters

See also

• American Literature
• Southern literature
• Southern United States

References

1. newsobserver.com | Extending the lines
2. Posthumous, Brown died before he was able to take his seat
3. http://www.chapter16.org/content/celebration-southern-literature-brings-many-south’s-finest-writers-chattanooga

External links

• The Fellowship of Southern Writers official website
• Arts & Education Council website
• Oral History Interview with Blyden Jackson from Oral Histories of the American South