Hal Crowther is the author of An Infuriating American: The Incendiary Arts of H.L. Mencken (University of Iowa Press, 2014); Gather at the River: Notes from the Post-Millennial South (Louisiana State University Press, 2005) which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in criticism; Cathedrals of Kudzu: A Personal Landscape of the South (Louisiana State University Press, 2000) which won a 2001 Lillian Smith Award and a 2001 Cecil Woods Jr. Award for Nonfiction from the Fellowship of Southern Writers; and Unarmed But Dangerous: A Withering Attack on All Things Phony, Foolish, and Fundamentally Wrong with America Today (Longstreet Press, 1995). He won the Baltimore Sun's H.L. Mencken Award in 1992 and a Pushcart Prize in 2014.  

Photo by Susan Raines