James Everett Kibler

Our review of "The Education of Chauncey Doolittle" can be found on the Our History Project Book Review Blog. Link

From the Publisher:

“Kibler has developed a theme that has long defined both Southern history and literature: the deep, metaphysical connection between the Southern character and temperament and the natural world . . . a graceful articulation of the agrarian vision.” ––Walter Sullivan

“In James Everett Kibler we find a member of a quickly diminishing breed: the man of letters.” ––Southern Partisan

James Everett Kibler is a novelist, poet, and professor of English at the University of Georgia, where he teaches popular courses in Southern literature, examining such figures as William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, Cormac McCarthy, Wendell Berry, and Larry Brown. Born and raised in upcountry South Carolina, Kibler spends much of his spare time tending to the renovation of an 1804 plantation home and the reforestation of the surrounding acreage. This home served as the subject of his first book, Our Fathers’ Fields: A Southern Story, for which he was awarded the prestigious Fellowship of Southern Writers Award for Nonfiction in 1999 and the Southern Heritage Society’s Award for Literary Achievement.

Kibler received his doctorate from the University of South Carolina, and his poetry has been honored by the Poetry Society of South Carolina and has appeared in publications throughout the country. In October 2004, the League of the South bestowed on him the Jefferson Davis Lifetime Achievement Award.

Kibler enjoys gardening, organic farming, and research into Southern history and culture. An avid preservationist, he prescribes to Allen Tate’s comment that “the task of the civilized intelligence is perpetual salvage.” He is a member of Phi Beta Kappa, the Southern Garden History Society, the League of the South, and the William Gilmore Simms Society. He is listed in Contemporary Writers’, “Who’s Who in America,” and “Who’s Who in the World.” He divides his time between Whitmire, South Carolina, and Athens, Georgia.

Other books by James Kibler:

The Education of Chauncey Doolittle
Memory’s Keep
Walking Toward Home
Child to the Waters
Our Fathers’ Fields: A Southern Story

Awards and Top Reviews

James Everett Kibler

“In James Everett Kibler we find a member of a quickly diminishing breed: the man of letters.” ––Southern Partisan

AWARDS AND HONORS

2004 Recipient of the Jefferson Davis Lifetime Achievement Award
1999 Recipient of the Fellowship of Southern Writers Award for Nonfiction
1999 Recipient of the Southern Heritage Society’s Award for Literary Achievement
Founding editor of The Simms Review
Kibler’s work has been published in the Mississippi Quarterly, Southern Literary Journal, and Early American Literature among other scholarly journals and publications.

MEMBERSHIPS AND ASSOCIATIONS

The Agrarian Foundation Board of Advisors
Phi Beta Kappa
The Southern Garden History Society
League of the South
Poetry Society of South Carolina
William Gilmore Simms Society


Our Fathers’ Fields: A Southern Story
“Part epic, part history, part memoir, this narrative history spans six generations of a Southern family in search of the agrarian ideal.” ––The New York Review of Books

Also reviewed by Publishers Weekly, Booklist, Southern Living, the Journal of American History, the South Carolina Review, Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture, Wendell Berry, and Shelby Foote.

Child to the Waters
“Scholar and critic James Everett Kibler is clearly one of our finest fiction writers.” ––George Garrett

Also reviewed by the South Carolina Review, MultiCultural Review, and Southern Partisan.

Walking Toward Home
“Kibler is a writer of humor and tradition, fun and folklore, and his stories unfold at the point where the present and the timeless intersect.” ––Robert Morgan, author of Gap Creek and Brave Enemies

Also reviewed by Lake Murray Magazine, The Mississippi Press, and Southern Partisan.

Memory’s Keep
“Even amid great changes, there are those who remember traditions and keep memories alive. Kibler’s novel serves as a reminder of the importance of balance in worldly progress.” ––The Bloomsbury Review

Also reviewed by Booklist, Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture, Athens Magazine, Southern Partisan, James Cantrell, Fred Chappell, and Robert Morgan.