About the Author

Born in Clinton, Mississippi, in 1942, Barry Hannah earned a BA from Mississippi College and a MFA from the University of Arkansas. His first novel, Geronimo Rex (1972), won the William Faulkner Prize and was nominated for the National Book Award. Airships, his 1978 collection of short stories about the Vietnam War, the Civil War, and the modern South, won the Arnold Gingrich Short Fiction Award. The following year, Hannah received the prestigious Award in Literature from the American Institute of Arts and Letters. He subsequently published eight novels and three story collections and won a Guggenheim, the Robert Penn Warren Lifetime Achievement Award, and the PEN / Malamud Award for excellence in the art of the short story.