Hal Crowther, "Freedom Fighters and Hell Raisers: A Gallery of Memorable Southerners"
The Regulator welcomes Hal Crowther, author of Freedom Fighters and Hell Raisers: A Gallery of Memorable Southerners, for a reading and book signing.
Award-winning journalist Crowther turns his attention to best and the brightest of the recently departed generation in the South. Freedom Fighters and Hell Raisers commemorates the passing of iconic Southern figures such as John Hope Franklin, Doc Watson, Judy Bonds, and James Dickey. Crowther has known most of the folks he profiles and has lived in their particular landscape for decades; he has some stories to tell, and he does so with a particular appreciation for his subjects’ accomplishments, their surroundings, and even, in the case of politicos Jesse Helms and George Wallace, their particular brand of notoriousness.
Hal Crowther is an award-winning critic and essayist and journalist whose work has appeared in Time, Newsweek, Granta, and Narrative magazines, among many others, and in the Oxford American, where his column “Dealer’s Choice” was a finalist for a National Magazine Award. His columns and reviews have been published in the New York Times, Washington Post, Atlanta Journal Constitution, Spectator, and many independent weeklies and journals. A recipient of the Baltimore Sun’s Mencken Award for Writing, he is the author of four essay collections and An Infuriating American: The Incendiary Arts of H.L. Mencken. For his third collection of essays, Gather at the River, he was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle prize for criticism. He lives in Hillsborough with his wife, novelist Lee Smith.