Athens, Ga. – The Georgia Review, the University of Georgia’s internationally respected literary quarterly, turns its focus closer to home in the fall 2012 edition: the oversize special issue features work by and about 32 of the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame inductees during the organization’s first decade. The GWHF, established and administered by the UGA Libraries, will celebrate its move to the new Richard B. Russell Building Special Collections Libraries this fall; the Review joins to commemorate the occasion and to share this wealth of Georgia writing with a national and international audience.
Spanning 186 years of Georgian literary history, the fall 2012 Georgia Review gathers a range of authors into a one-of-a-kind collection that reflects the diversity of the Hall’s members: from Augustus Baldwin Longstreet, whose Georgia Scenes, Characters, Incidents, &c. in the First Half of the Century of the Republic was published in 1835 and lauded by Edgar Allan Poe, to Natasha Trethewey-Pulitzer Prize winner, current U.S. poet laureate and UGA graduate, whose latest book, Thrall, was just released. The issue also showcases the connections between well-known Georgia figures-including Lillian Smith and Ralph McGill, Joel Chandler Harris and Alice Walker, and Erskine Caldwell and Byron Herbert Reece.
Readers will encounter works from such Georgia writers as Sidney Lanier, W.E.B. Du Bois, Conrad Aiken, Jimmy Carter and Harry Crews, as well as from others who may be new to many readers: Elias Boudinot, Georgia Douglas Johnson, John Oliver Killens, Robert Burch and John Stone.
Also featured are essays by writers and critics about the work and lives of Hall of Fame honorees: the late Stanley W. Lindberg, longtime editor of The Georgia Review, on Caldwell; Glenn T. Eskew on Savannah-born lyricist and music industry titan Johnny Mercer; Milledgeville-based poet Alice Friman on Carson McCullers; Ward Briggs on poet and novelist James Dickey; and poet/essayist Marianne Boruch on Flannery O’Connor.
Additionally, work appears from several GWHF members, living and deceased, who are or have been associated with the Athens area and/or UGA: Raymond Andrews, Coleman Barks, Terry Kay, James Kilgo, Philip Lee Williams and Judith Ortiz Cofer.
“In total, this issue presents a literary canon that is quite different from that found in mainstream American literature anthologies,” said Stephen Corey, editor of The Georgia Review. “It includes a number of pieces that may be familiar to students of Georgia’s literature and history-portions of Sidney Lanier’s classic poem ‘The Marshes of Glynn,’ for instance-along with rarities such as Du Bois’ essay ‘Georgia: Invisible Empire State,’ excerpts from Reece’s heretofore unpublished ‘Black Notebook,’ previously unpublished letters by novelist and screenwriter Calder Willingham, unpublished fiction from Andrews and Crews, and other previously unseen gems.”
The visual art feature enhances the issue’s historical bent, offering four separate color folios of images from archival editions of works by Elias Boudinot, Joel Chandler Harris, Erskine Caldwell, Frank Yerby, Raymond Andrews, Walter White, Judith Ortiz Cofer, Coleman Barks and eight others.
Corey said that the fall 2012 issue is “…quite unlike . . . anything I’ve been involved with during my 29-plus years with the journal, and I dare say during the whole run of the Review since 1947. Never before has The Georgia Review offered a single issue with such a diverse array of talents and perspectives and such a wealth of historical treasures.”
For further information about the fall 2012 issue or other issues, see www.thegeorgiareview.com, e-mail garev@uga.edu, call 706/542-3481 or 800/542-3481, or find The Georgia Review on Facebook or Twitter. Classroom/bulk rates are available.
