“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. |