Greg Downs (born November 22, 1971) is an author and historian. He is best known for the Flannery O'Connor Award-winning short story collection Spit Baths (2006) and his histories of the United States Civil War. Early life and education Downs was born in San Francisco and raised in Elizabethtown and Hyden, Kentucky; Nashville; and Kapaa, Kauai, Hawaii. He is the grandson of virologist and naturalist Wilbur G. Downs. He is a B.A. graduate of Yale University, where his advisor was Melvin Patrick Ely. He graduated from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop, which awarded him a James Michener/Copernicus Society of America fellowship. Downs has a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. Career Fiction Downs' collection of short stories, Spit Baths, was published in 2006 by University of Georgia Press. It won a Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction. The book received largely positive reviews. A Publishers Weekly review of Spit Baths reads, "A strong sense of style and unfaltering command of his material allow Downs to take the kinds of risks in tone and subject that make his debut a love-it-or-hate-it proposition". Kirkus Reviews said, "perhaps the most ambitious and compelling story here is 'Ain’t I a King, Too?,' and called Downs "a writer to watch". SFGate wrote, "Downs is gifted at presenting the tension that accompanies familial love -- be it the bafflement those tied by blood feel at the depth of their attachment, or the anxiety those bound by choice feel when realizing affection alone may not hold them together. His historical scope serves to enliven, not obscure, this uncertainty". Martha Woodall of The Philadelphia Inquirer wrote that Spit Baths was a "rich and mesmerizing collection of short fiction". Chris Collins of The Lexington Herald-Ledger wrote that it was "one of the most entertaining books of short stories in a long time". History Downs studies 19th-century American political culture. He is an associate professor at the University of California, Davis. Downs has edited and written several books about Civil War and Reconstruction-era United States history. He has also written for publications such as The American Historical Review, San Francisco Chronicle, The Atlantic and The Washington Post. In 2015, Downs and Scott Nesbit released the Mapping Occupation project, which explores the occupation of the Reconstruction south by the United States Army. Ian Binnington in a review in Journal of American History called it "expertly presented and packed with information".