The profiles of the thirteen southern writers in this book show how growing up in the South shaped their work and contributed to the estimable collection of literature we call "southern writing." For years, critics have attempted to analyze and define "southern" literature. The patterns that emerge through these interviews offer clues to that diversity through the cultural, economic, and social experiences of the writers. The writers represented here, all born in the first half of the Twentieth Century, are Shelby Foote, Eudora Welty, Lee Smith, Fred Chappell, Elizabeth Spencer, Richard Marius, George Garrett, Jayne Anne Phillips, Elizabeth Cox, Allen Wier, Willie Morris, Yusef Komunyadaa, and Doris Betts. Their work reflects a unique view of an Old South that slowly began to evolve into a landscape dotted with shopping malls and criss-crossed with interstate highways. But in their stories and novels they have preserved the best of the old, insulated towns they grew up in, as well as the worst of the conflicts southerners of all colors endured.