Place Like Mississippi: A Journey Through a Real and Imagined Literary Landscape

An illustrated tour of the landscapes of Mississippi that have inspired the state’s many lauded writers, from Faulkner and Welty to Morris and Ward. A palpable connection to the landscapes of Mississippi can be felt in the work of the state’s many lauded writers. This connection to the land runs deep - across onerous lines of class, gender, and race - spanning generations of authors birthed in the Magnolia State. It’s difficult to read Faulkner, Welty, Wright, and Ward and not come away with the very particular sense of place that the state and the greater American South represents in their work. In A Place Like Mississippi, W. Ralph Eubanks takes readers on a complete tour of the real and imagined landscapes that have inspired generations of authors. Eubanks is a native Mississippian who has spent time in all of the state’s 82 counties, and he knows its writers and its complicated history well. In A Place Like Mississippi, Eubanks honors and explores this landscape, and this history, as he reveals the many ways it has informed the work of some of America’s most treasured authors. Supported by contemporary and historical photography, A Place Like Mississippi is a must-read for fans of Southern literature. AUTHOR: W. Ralph Eubanks is author of Ever Is a Long Time and The House at the End of the Road. He has also contributed articles and reviews to the Chicago Tribune, Preservation, The Hedgehog Review, The American Scholar, Time, The Wall Street Journal, WIRED, The New Yorker, and NPR. He is a recipient of a 2007 Guggenheim Fellowship and has been a fellow at the New America Foundation. Eubanks lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife and three children, and is currently visiting professor of Southern Studies at the University of Mississippi in Oxford. 97 colour photographs