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), a 2005 finalist for the National Book Critics Circle award for criticism; Cathedrals of Kudzu: A Personal Landscape of the South (Louisiana State University Press, 2000), which won the Lillian Smith Book Award for Commentary and the 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 Writing Award in 1992 and the Russell J. Jandoli Award for Excellence in Journalism in 2000. He is formerly a syndicated columnist and New York news magazine editor.  

Photo by Susan Raines