Tuesday, February 16, 1999
WRITER: Phil Williams, 706/542-8501, philwpio@arches.uga.edu
CONTACT: James Kibler, 706/542-2239, jkibler@arches.uga.edu
UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA ENGLISH PROFESSOR WINS MAJOR AWARD FROM FELLOWSHIP OF SOUTHERN WRITERS
ATHENS, Ga. – James Kibler, a professor of English at the University of Georgia, has been named winner of a prestigious award from the Fellowship of Southern Writers for his book Our Fathers’ Fields.
Kibler’s book was named winner of the Fellowship’s Award for Non-Fiction, and he will be honored during ceremonies at the 10th Chattanooga Conference on Southern Literature in April. Winner of the fiction award is Charles Frazier for his novel, Cold Mountain, which earlier won the National Book Award for Fiction. Other winners were named in poetry and drama, as well as in special honorary categories.
"This is the highest honor I have received in my career, and I’m still a little shell-shocked at having won it," said Kibler. "It’s a wonderful stage in your career when you can be recognized and praised by people you value and honor." Kibler is the first University of Georgia faculty member to be honored by the Fellowship of Southern Writers.
Members in the Fellowship are drawn from writers of fiction, poetry, drama, criticism and history. To be considered for membership, writers must have been born and raised or have resided for a significant part or their lives in the South or have written works that in character and spirit embody aspects of the southern experience. Members include many of the most honored American writers of the second half of the 20th century, including Shelby Foote, Ernest Gaines, Gail Godwin, Reynolds Price, William Styron and Eudora Welty. Elected members who have since died included Cleanth Brooks, James Dickey, Ralph Ellison, Walker Percy and Robert Penn Warren.
The Fellowship makes in headquarters in Chattanooga and meet every two years in conjunction with the Conference on Southern Literature. Other winners of awards this year, in addition to Kibler and Frazier, include Shelby Foote, Barry Hannah, Bobbie Anne Mason, Michael Knight, Margaret Edson and T. R. Hummer.
Kibler’s book, now into its third printing in less than a year, takes as its subject a plantation and its grounds on the Tyger River in Souther Carolina. Kibler writes that in restoring the dilapidated house and overgrown garden and learning of the six generations of the Hardy family who lived in the house, he was able to develop a new perspective on the South and its history. He calls the book "part agrarian novel, memoir, history and chronicle."
"I tell my classes that we don’t choose our own mothers and fathers but that we do choose our literary mothers and fathers and that we should choose well," said Kibler. "The members of the Fellowship of Southern Writers are generous people and fine writers. They have what might be called a kind of hospitality of the spirit, and it’s a great honor to be associated with them."
For more information on the Chattanooga Conference on Southern Literature, call Susan Frady Robinson, executive director, at 1-800-267-4232.
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