An extraordinary photographic documentary of the wild and cultivated plants and landscape of Faulkner's inspirational writing sanctuary

The plants and landscape at Rowan Oak are the “little postage stamp of soil” that William Faulkner owned, walked, and tended for over thirty years during the writing of many of his short stories and novels. Faulkner saw and smelled the earth and listened to sounds from the cultivated grounds and the surrounding woods. This is the place that offered him refuge for writing and provided him food from its garden, fruit and nut trees, and pasture for his horses and a milk cow. Rowan Oak boasts a diverse landscape, encompassing an aristocratic eastern redcedar-lined drive and walk as well as hardy ornamental shrubs, trees, pastures, and a hardwood forest with virgin timber. More than fifty years after Faulkner's death, Rowan Oak remains a sanctuary and a place of mystery and beauty nestled in the midst of Oxford, Mississippi. The photographs in The Land of Rowan Oak are botanist Ed Croom's exploration and documentation of the changes in the plants and landscape over more than a decade. Croom encountered early morning mists, the summer heat and haze, and even rare snowfalls in his near-daily walks on the grounds. His photographs record a decaying fence line, trees and plants that have since disappeared, and the newly restored sunken garden. This book honors the land Faulkner loved. While Faulkner's novels have left an indelible legacy in southern and American letters, the landscape of his beloved home also serves as a record of the botanical history of this most storied corner of the American literary South.

2022 Anthropology of Tourism Interest Group Nelson Graburn Prize, winner When residents and tourists visit sites of slavery, whose stories are told? All too often the lives of slaveowners are centered, obscuring the lives of enslaved people. Behind the Big House gives readers a candid, behind-the-scenes look at what it really takes to interpret the difficult history of slavery in the U.S. South. The book explores Jodi Skipper’s eight-year collaboration with the Behind the Big House program, a community-based model used at local historic sites to address slavery in the collective narrative of U.S. history and culture. In laying out her experiences through an autoethnographic approach, Skipper seeks to help other activist scholars of color negotiate the nuances of place, the academic public sphere, and its ambiguous systems of reward, recognition, and evaluation.

A year has passed since the defeat of the Great Foulness and the rings of the four great houses have been restored to their rightful heirs. But a new danger has arisen; the Mother Ice Dragon has awakened.

In the start of a new fantasy trilogy, the Clan of Ash is dying, and their totem tree is withering away. There is a prophecy that a daughter of Ash will rise again, but none have survived the mass killings--except one.

This 304 page coffee table book takes a look at 26 of America s great authors and the places that inspired them. Unique to this book of literary biography is the element of the photograph. With over 140 photographs throughout, the images add mood and dimension to the writing and they are often shockingly close to what the featured authors described in their own words. Lushly illustrated, and beautifully designed, the book is as much of a pleasure to look at as it is to read. Rags to riches. Forbidden loves. Supernatural experiences. Narrow escapes. Some of the greatest stories of American literature are the stories of the scribes themselves and of the places that sparked their imaginations. In 2007, writer Thomas Hummel and photographer Tamra Dempsey set out in search of the sources of inspiration for 26 of this country's greatest authors. Two years and twenty thousand miles later, the result is A Journey Through Literary America -- a literary pilgrimage in photography and prose. In the words of one reviewer, "this is a beautiful and necessary book."

Times are changing in Rendelsham. The old King is dead, and the foolish Prince Florian has assumed the throne. Florian's mother, Queen Ysa of the House of Oak, still controls the land from behind the scences, but her job grows more difficult every day. Her unworthy, headstrong son is harder to control than her husband was, and she must spend more time than ever masking her own movements. Her husband's illegitimate daughter Ashen, heir to the nearly dead House of Ash, still causes trouble by her very existence, and must never be given an opening to the throne. The barbarian Sea-Rover clan presents problems from the edge of the Bog, Ysa's newest magical ally has been exposed as a traitor, and nothing is going as Ysa had planned. And still the unknown yet encroaching threat from the North continues to grow. Through births and deaths, marriages and duels, love and betrayal, magic and force, the four Houses of Rendelsham can only survive by the strength of their unity--but is unity possible in such a court of intrigue as this one?