Hal Crowther is a syndicated columnist, essayist, and critic, whose work appears regularly in the Oxford American, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Independent Weekly, and Progressive Populist, among many other publications. In former years, he was a staff writer for Time and media editor for Newsweek. He was a finalist for the National Magazine Award for Commentary in 2003 and winner of the H. L. Mencken Writing Award from the Baltimore Sun. His previous books are Unarmed but Dangerous and Cathedrals of Kudzu: A Personal Landscape of the South, winner of the Lillian Smith Book Award and the Fellowship of Southern Writers Award for Nonfiction. He lives in Hillsborough, North Carolina, with his wife, the novelist Lee Smith.