South Carolina Fiction

I placed Ron Rash in North Carolina Fiction, where most of his books are set, despite the fact that he was born in Chester, South Carolina, and has maintained a residence in Clemson, South Carolina, for decades. Dorothy Allison was born and grew up in Greenville, South Carolina, the daughter of a fifteen-year-old single mother. She was the first in her family to graduate from high school, where she earned recognition as a National Merit Scholar. Her autobiographical novel, Bastard Out of Carolina (1992) was one of only five finalists for the National Book Award, and her second novel, Cavedweller (1998) was a New York Times best seller and received the Lambda Literary Award for fiction. Bennie Lee Sinclair (1939-2000), also of Greenville, is mostly known as a poet, but published the novel, The Lynching in 1992. Another Greenville novelist is Janie Turner who taught writing at Bob Jones University and is the author of eight novels set near Greenville. Winter Birds was named one of the “one hundred best books” of 2006 by Publishers Weekly and won a Christy Award. George Singleton has been called "the unchallenged king of the comic southern short story" by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. His two novels are Novel (2005) and Work Shirts for Madmen (2007). A native of South Carolina he teaches at Wofford College in Spartanburg and was inducted into the Fellowship of Southern Writers in 2015. Mark Powell was born and raised in Oconee County. He is the author of five novels. Blood Kin (2006) and The Dark Corner (2012) are set in the South Carolina Blue Ridge Mountains. He teaches at Appalachian State University.