Now available on SoundCloud, Henrik Möller of the Danish podcast Udda Ting interviews William Gay Archive Director JM White. After the 3 minute Danish introduction, the rest of the podcast is in English. In discussion is William Gay’s life and books, as well as the posthumous novels. The podcast run time is 54 minutes.
Finding the Lost Country- The Life of William Gay is Released
We are excited to announce the release of Finding the Lost Country- the Life of William Gay. A fascinating biography of William Gay, published by the William Gay Archive’s Anomolaic Press, it is of interest to fans of William Gay as well as those interested in a life of a writer. Researched and compiled by J.M. White, the book is a result of the author’s years knowing William and his family. In addition to a thoughtful look at William’s life, the book contains personal photographs, William’s correspondence with Cormac McCarthy, unpublished written fragments from the Archive, and more.
The book is 460 pages, paperback, and is NOW AVAILABLE.
FROM J.M. WHITE-
Born in 1939 and raised in the rural south, other than his time in the Navy and a brief sojourn working in the factories in Chicago, he spent his whole life in middle Tennessee. He was raised in a sharecropper's shack with no electricity and no running water. His father never owned a car or a house. Tennessee ranks near the bottom of all the states in the union in terms of education and Lewis County ranks very low among the 92 counties in the state. He graduated from the Lewis County High School but was completely self-educated as both a writer and a painter. He was inspired by the writings of William Faulkner, Thomas Wolfe and Cormac McCarthy. He studied and wrote until he could match the great writers in the Southern literary tradition in the aesthetic power and intensity of their prose. He passed away at the age of 71 in 2012.
William Gay was born to be a writer. For as long as he could remember he was fascinated by the written word and wanted nothing other than to write. He faced incredible odds but there was simply nothing else that he wanted to do and nothing else that he would do. He lived a hardscrabble earthly life, rugged and simple. He served his art and let his art serve him. He was creating something original, something high energy, cut to the bone, coming out of the dark with an element of danger, exploding on the page. He wrote prose that is heartfelt and melancholy, imbued with beauty and concern for all living things. In a world that didn't seem to care, he was an earth angel singing from some imaginary corner of the universe. His life and the books he created are a master class in the art of writing.
Well Read Magazine January 2026, Issue No. 42
Well Read Magazine issue 42 begins 2026 with a focus on the new biography book, Finding Lost Country- The Life of William Gay. The William Gay Archive’s Dawn Major leads the insightful interview with author and Archive Director J.M. White.
Get your copy of Finding the Lost Country- The Life of William Gay HERE.
Finding the Lost Country- The Life of William Gay
We are excited to announce the forthcoming biography of William Gay, published by the William Gay Archive’s Anomolaic Press. Researched and compiled by J.M. White, the book is a result of the author’s years knowing William and his family. In addition to a thoughtful look at William’s life, the book contains personal photographs, William’s correspondence with Cormac McCarthy, unpublished written fragments from the Archive, and more.
The book is 460 pages, paperback, and is NOW AVAILABLE.
FROM J.M. WHITE-
Born in 1939 and raised in the rural south, other than his time in the Navy and a brief sojourn working in the factories in Chicago, he spent his whole life in middle Tennessee. He was raised in a sharecropper's shack with no electricity and no running water. His father never owned a car or a house. Tennessee ranks near the bottom of all the states in the union in terms of education and Lewis County ranks very low among the 92 counties in the state. He graduated from the Lewis County High School but was completely self-educated as both a writer and a painter. He was inspired by the writings of William Faulkner, Thomas Wolfe and Cormac McCarthy. He studied and wrote until he could match the great writers in the Southern literary tradition in the aesthetic power and intensity of their prose. He passed away at the age of 71 in 2012.
William Gay was born to be a writer. For as long as he could remember he was fascinated by the written word and wanted nothing other than to write. He faced incredible odds but there was simply nothing else that he wanted to do and nothing else that he would do. He lived a hardscrabble earthly life, rugged and simple. He served his art and let his art serve him. He was creating something original, something high energy, cut to the bone, coming out of the dark with an element of danger, exploding on the page. He wrote prose that is heartfelt and melancholy, imbued with beauty and concern for all living things. In a world that didn't seem to care, he was an earth angel singing from some imaginary corner of the universe. His life and the books he created are a master class in the art of writing.
Well Read Magazine- December 2022
December’s issue of Well Read Magazine features the round table discussion with the William Gay Archive contributors that was published in Stories From the Attic, as well as a photographed excerpt from The Long Home, with editing suggestions by Cormac McCarthy. Concluding a four part series, we would like to thank everyone at Well Read for their support and enthusiasm.
Well Read Magazine is an online publication and is available for free. Follow this link to view.
Review of Stories from the Attic from Chapter 16
A review of the latest William Gay collection by Wayne Catan, of Chapter 16, a community of Tennessee writers, readers, and passerby, from June 27, 2022.
Review of Stories from the Attic from The Atlanta Journal-Constitiution
Stories from the Attic Now Available from Dzanc Books.
The final book from the William Gay Archive has been released. What began as This Ride Ain’t Over Yet, an early attempt at collecting posthumous short works, Stories from the Attic contains previously unpublished short stories, memoirs, and fragments. The book includes a preface by J.M. White, and concludes with a question and answer with the team of editors that have worked on the publication.
From Dzanc Books:
“From a celebrated master of the Southern Gothic comes a last collection of hard-hitting short fiction, his final posthumous work.
Beloved for his novels Twilight, The Long Home, and The Lost Country and his groundbreaking collection I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down, William Gay returns with one final posthumous collection of short stories, adapted from the archive found after his death in February 2012. In addition to previously unpublished short stories, Stories from the Attic includes fragments from two of the unpublished novels that were works in progress at the time of his death.
Marked by his signature skill and bare-knuckled insight, this collection is a must-read for William Gay devotees and fans of Southern short fiction.”
$26.95
Publication Date: July 17, 2022
Hardcover: 348 pages
ISBN: 9781950539451
William Gay Discussion at the Revival: Lost Southern Voices Festival
William Gay editor and enthusiast Dawn Major will be discussing William Gay as part of this year’s Revival: Lost Southern Voices Festival. Registering information is below.
The sixth Revival: Lost Southern Voices is March 24 - 26, 2022. Revival: Lost Southern Voices is a festival for readers that celebrates historically excluded, erased, or marginalized Southern voices. During this annual conference, invited presenters discuss Southern authors or artists whose works are out-of-print or otherwise do not receive the attention they deserve. We invite the public, scholars, students, writers, and inquisitive readers to join the conversation as we continue to discover and revive these Lost Southern Voices. The conference will be virtual again this year, and we have six truly exciting panels. There will be two Zoom panels each day of the conference, one at 1 p.m. ET, and the other at 4 p.m. ET. Several are themed on specific authors or events in Atlanta's past.
Here is the schedule, as well as links to register:
Thursday, March 24, 2022
Panel 1 - Literature, Art, and Music from Lost Southern Voices
1 p.m. ET, Zoom Webinar
Moderator: Josh Russell
Jim Clark: Don West, poet and social activist
Caroline Herring: Hedy West, musician
Dawn Major: William Gay, author and painter
Register here.
Panel 2 - Rediscovering Frank Yerby
4 p.m. ET, Zoom Webinar
Moderator: Eli Arnold
Valerie Matthews, Yerby scholar
Veronica Watson, Yerby scholar
Matthew Teutsch, Yerby scholar
Register here.
Friday, March 25, 2022
Panel 3 - "It's Never Been Over": Generational Trauma and the Atlanta Child Murders
1 p.m. ET, Zoom Webinar
Moderator: Jessica Handler
Maurice Hobson, historian
Calinda Lee, historian
Vern Smith, journalist
Register here.
Panel 4 - These Bones Are Not My Child: The Life and Work of Toni Cade Bambara
4 p.m. ET, Zoom Webinar
Moderator: Beverly Guy-Sheftall
Beverly Guy-Sheftall, Bambara scholar
Linda Holmes, Bambara biographer
Louis Massiah, Bambara filmmaker
Register here.
Saturday, March 26, 2022
Panel 5 -The Life and Work of John Oliver Killens
1 p.m. ET, Zoom Webinar
Moderator: Matt Dischinger
Tina McElroy Ansa, novelist and Killens devotee
Register here.
Panel 6 - The Day Atlanta Stood Still: Atlanta and The Legacy of the Orly Plane Crash
4 p.m. ET, Zoom Webinar
Moderator: Jim Auchmutey
Baxter Jones, arts philanthropist
Chris Moser, documentary director
Register here.
As part of this year's conference, there will be raffles! More information on those is coming soon. Follow the festival on Facebook at @RevivalLostSouthernVoices, Twitter (@RevivalLost) and Instagram (revivallsv) for updates! You can also watch last year's conference on the Georgia Center for the Book's YouTube channel here.
Preorders for Stories from the Attic
The posthumous short story collection, Stories from the Attic, is now available for preorder from Dzanc Books. We began working on collecting and editing these pages in 2012 and it is exciting to see them finally published. Another gracious thank you to Michelle Dotter and everyone at Dzanc Books for their work and dedication to this project.
From Dzanc:
From a celebrated master of the Southern Gothic comes a last collection of hard-hitting short fiction, his final posthumous work
Beloved for his novels Twilight, The Long Home, and The Lost Country and his groundbreaking collection I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down, William Gay returns with one final posthumous collection of short stories, adapted from the archive found after his death in February 2012. In addition to previously unpublished short stories, Stories from the Attic includes fragments from two of the unpublished novels that were works in progress at the time of his death.
Marked by his signature skill and bare-knuckled insight, this collection is a must-read for William Gay devotees and fans of Southern short fiction.
Fugitives of the Heart Published
The last posthumous novel by William Gay, Fugitives of the Heart, has been published by The University of West Alabama’s Livingston Press and is currently available at their store.
With this writing, William Gay has offered admirable homage to Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn. Marion Yates, a teenage orphan, is taken in by an ex-schoolteacher named Black Crowe. The boy in turn cares for Crowe when he is temporarily disabled by a dynamite blast. Every hardscrabble thing we have come to expect from Gay lies in this novel, including an offbeat and dark humor. With a forward by Sonny Brewer and afterward by J.M. White.
The William Gay Archive’s own Dawn Major has written an excellent review of the book herself for the Southern Literary Review.
Dawn Major Discusses William Gay on Five Points Podcast
in Podcast
Five Points is a literary journal of poetry, fiction, essays, interviews and art. The Five Points podcast strives to create discussion beyond the pages of the journal and engage readers with new content. The second episode centers on volume 19, issue # 3 of Five Points. It features friends and poets Chad Davidson and Gregory Fraser reading and reflecting on one another’s work, and a conversation with Dawn Major about the work—prose and painting alike—of the late William Gay. For more Five Points content, please visit our website, http://fivepoints.gsu.edu/.
Fugitives of the Heart
We have completed editing the manuscript for Fugitives of the Heart, the last novel to be released posthumously by the William Gay Archive. The book will be released by the University of Alabama Press in the Spring of 2021.
The story follows the adventures and wanderings of adolescent Yates, as he navigates himself between Allen’s Creek, Ackerman’s Field, and the Harrikin.
Roundtable Interview in The Chattahoochee Review
The editors of the William Gay Archive and Dzanc Books are featured in a roundtable interview within the Volume 38.2-3 Fall 2018/Winter 2019 issue of The Chattahoochee Review. Michelle Dotter of Dzanc Books, Lamont Ingalls, Sheila Kennedy, Susan McDonald, Paul Nitsche, and Michael White discuss William Gay’s ongoing legacy and the releasing of his posthumous works.
The Chattahoochee Review is a literary journal published by Perimeter College at Georgia State University.
The Lost Country in Southern Living's Best Southern Books of the Year 2018
The Lost Country was recently chosen as one of Southern Living’s Best Southern Books of the Year 2018.
The Lost Country Release Day
Raise your glass to William Gay. Today The Lost Country is released on Dzanc Books. Order your copy from Dzanc here, or Amazon here, or your support your local booksellers.
The Lost Country Available July 10, 2018
Ten years after it was first announced, The Lost Country is to be released on July 10, 2018 from Dzanc Books.
ADVANCE PRAISE FOR THE LOST COUNTRY
“The language and the imagery Gay uses is so vividly haunting that I want to savor it all. Definitely a must-read for fans of Southern Literature.”
—Catherine Bock, Parnassus Books
“Like so many fans of Gay's, I've been waiting to read this seemingly mythical work, The Lost Country, for quite some time....Gay's elegiac prose sings once again as he breathes life into his characters and mines his patch of soil with the skill of the old masters. The Lost Country is the story of Billy Edgewater and his hard journey through a post World War II South filled with the downtrodden—hucksters, racists, drunks, bad or lost men and women, all trying to make it in a harsh rural setting that is unforgiving yet beautiful. It's a helluva good ride and I can't wait to recommend it.”
—Cody Morrison, Square Books
“The Lost Country lands like a shimmering gift from the beyond. For those of us who cherish and honor Gay's tremendous talent, his bold method of seeing the waste and wonder we are, this posthumous novel is a reminder of what we miss: the language pitched toward the sublime, his men and women grappling for redemption in a world that has damned them, his understanding of grace in the presence of human badness. When Gay died too soon, we lost much, but The Lost Country gives a piece of him back to us.”
—William Giraldi, author of Hold the Dark
“The novel exposes us to a deliciously dark southern underbelly, one that, when paired with its sparse, lean prose and quiet intensity, becomes incredibly mesmerizing.”
—The Next Best Book Club
For ordering and more information, please visit Dzanc Books.
Radio Interview With J.M. White
A radio interview with J.M. White from April 2018 regarding finding the manuscript of The Lost Country and Little Sister Death, along with observations about what it was like to get to know William Gay and his place in modern literature.
Stoneburner Now Available at Amazon
We are finally able to announce that Stoneburner, our first posthumous William Gay publishing effort on Anomolaic Press, is available at Amazon.com. From all of us at the Archive, thank you for your support and we hope you enjoy this new novel.
The Advance Copy of The Lost Country
We are finalizing the final proof of The Lost Country, to be published by Dzanc Books in July, 2018. Words cannot describe how exciting it is to get the advance reader and see all of our hard work realized. Everyone at the William Gay Archive is grateful to Dzanc Books and Publisher and Editor in chief Michelle Dotter for their dedication in seeing this book through.