Pull up a chair or gather round the campfire and get ready for creepy tales of ghostly hauntings, eerie happenings, and other strange occurrences in the Peach State. Whether read around the campfire on a dark and stormy night or from the backseat of the family van on the way to grandma's, this is a collection to treasure.

What is the truth about Nancy Hart, Georgia's legendary "War Woman" of the American Revolution? What is the connection between a Georgia defrocked Methodist minister and an award for bravery for members of the U.S. Marshals Service? Why was "the meanest man in Georgia" like a character out of Faulkner? How did a convicted murderer from Georgia end up playing a vital role in World War II's famous Great Escape? And how did a man born a slave in Georgia become the chief U.S. diplomat to Liberia? All these sidelines of history and more are explored, and more, in this collection of tales of Georgia and Georgians drawn from history.

These tales range from the supernatural to the romantic and from the sacred to the secular. A celebration of American imagination, tradition, and manners, this collection of folktales reveals the spirit of people who responded to the demands of rural living with grace, good humor, and endurance.

Tales From Georgia's Gnat Line is about the South-the Deep South; Larry Walker's part of the world. It's about good people, and some not so good. It's about a part of the United States that was, and is, somewhat different from the rest. And it's about cotton, because in many ways cotton caused Southerners to do some of the things that otherwise good people would not have done. It's never been easy to be a Southerner, black or white. But it's worth holding on to, and we must. Walker promises to do his part. He uses "y'all" and does it often. It's not just the way he speaks, but the way he thinks, y'all means everyone. Yes, the road is long and narrow. It's wider down in the South than it used to be, and it is getting wider all the time, but there have been recent problems which will need to be addressed. We can't afford to fight the Civil War again--either here in the South or elsewhere in this country. This book is about the South of the past, the present, and, if read carefully, of the future.

In 1888, Charles Colcock Jones Jr. published the first collection of folk narratives from the Gullah-speaking people of the South Atlantic coast, tales he heard black servants exchange on his family's rice and cotton plantation. It has been out of print and largely unavailable until now. Jones saw the stories as a coastal variation of Joel Chandler Harris's inland dialect tales and sought to preserve their unique language and character. Through Jones' rendering of the sound and syntax of nineteenth-century Gullah, the lively stories describe the adventures and mishaps of such characters as "Buh Rabbit," "Buh Ban-Yad Rooster," and other animals. The tales range from the humorous to the instructional and include stories of the "sperits," Daddy Jupiter's "vision," a dying bullfrog's last wish, and others about how "buh rabbit gained sense" and "why the turkey buzzard won't eat crabs."

Presents 260 of the rural South's best stories collected over a twenty year period, with their roots in Anglo-Saxon, African-American, and Native American traditions

Here is a personal and compassionate book for everyone writers, poets, teachers, lovers of life, and especially those seeking to find their writing voices again or for the first time. It is an autobiographical travelogue moving from a volcano in Hawaii to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and places in between, with writing at its heart. Writing Toward Home offers practical advice on overcoming some of the obstacles writers of all ages face: writer's block, fear of rejection, confronting silencing critics in your head, finding the time to write. Each short chapter speaks to the larger truths about writing and how to truly live the writer's life: how to become more of a risk taker, how to excavate the past as a source, and how to become an acute observer of the world. Writing Toward Home is a book that will remind you-and help you remind your students-that the true source of writing is the creative self. In this fast culture when most people have so little time to do anything but menial tasks, it will jumpstart you, it will awaken to you the journey within, it will make you want to write.