A graduate of Centre College and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Brian Carpenter is a freelance writer and editor. His articles on the South have appeared in Southern Cultures, Southern Literary Journal, Southern Review, The Companion to Southern Literature, and the anthology Cornbread Nation 1: The Best Southern Food Writing.
A native of Dickinson, Alabama, Tom Franklin is the Edgar Award-winning author of Poachers, Hell at the Breech, Smonk, and the New York Times best seller Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter. Franklin teaches creative writing at the University of Mississippi in Oxford.