Child to the Waters (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781589800953)

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.