Being Dead in South Carolina

Jacob White can write.–Padgett Powell

A wide array of layered stories written with disarming care.–Ron Carlson, author of Five Skies

Jacob White’s characters are in trouble, and their creator brings them to life with language both lush and harsh, gritty and great.–Antonya Nelson, author of Bound

Fresh, fierce, sad, funny, deep. The author is a natural story teller, with a voice that is like music… . This book sings. It’s real, it’s beautiful.–Lev Raphael, author of The German Money

Set largely in the modern South, the stories in Being Dead in South Carolina concern people who no longer recognize themselves, who have arrived, like the Sunbelt itself, to a strange day that seems disconnected from all the old days, the old stories, the old selves. Yet it’s always on this day we must answer for ourselves–right an overturned car, recover the body of a brother, convince a son of our worth and his. We are adrift with bad judgment, a little loose in the head, but searching for the correction.

A South Carolina native, Jacob White studied creative writing at the University of Houston, where he received the Donald Barthelme Memorial Fellowship in Fiction. His fiction has appeared in many journals, including the Georgia Review, New Letters, Salt Hill, and the Sewanee Review, from which he received the Andrew Lytle Prize. He teaches creative writing at Johnson State College and co-edits Green Mountains Review.