Biography

Brian Carpenter is a freelance writer and coeditor of the anthology Grit Lit: A Rough South Reader. A Tennessee native, he graduated from Centre College and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His articles on the South have appeared in various books and journals, including Southern Cultures, The Southern Review and the anthology Cornbread Nation: The Best of Southern Food Writing.

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Grit Lit: A Rough South Reader

An anthology of memoir and fiction by some of the most acclaimed writers in contemporary Southern literature

Drawing on storytelling traditions as old as Southern literature itself, Grit Lit is the first anthology devoted to contemporary writing about the rough South. From literary legends to emerging voices, the acclaimed writers featured in this collection view their hardscrabble South without romanticism or false nostalgia, not through moonlight and magnolia but moonshine and Marlboros.

This is the dirty South as captured by those rooted in its land yet able to share its stories with candor and courage. Grit Lit guides readers through tales both tall and true, intoxicating stories of loss, violence, failure, feuds, family, and above all, survival against the odds. Raw and raucous, Grit Lit gathers some of the most provocative writing to come out of the South in the last thirty years. With a preface by Edgar Award–winning author Tom Franklin and Brian Carpenter's introduction to the genre's origins and influences, this bold anthology lays bare the rough South in all its battered glory and dares readers not to stare in awe.