Rick Bragg

2009 winner of the Harper Lee Award, Rick Bragg's first book, All Over but the Shoutin', was named Memoir of the Year and sold out of nine printings. The Pulitizer Prize winner has come a long way from his hardscrabble beginnings in Possum Trot to becoming one of the nation's most respected writers. He honed his writing skills with newspaper stints in Anniston and Birmingham. When he was at The New York Times Rick was given the mean-tough-sad assignments such as the invasion of Haiti, the Susan Smith murders, the Oklahoma City bombings and the funerals of George Wallace and Willie Morris.

His ability to get to the heart of the matter and write in an informative and entertaining fashion is why his collection of newspaper stories, Somebody Told Me, was a runaway seller nationwide. It was named non fiction Book of the Year by the Southeast Booksellers Association.

When we hosted the signing for Ava's Man it was beamed by C-SPAN to all 50 states. I Am a Soldier, Too recounts the remarkable story of POW Jessica Lynch's experiences in the Iraq war. There is no writer better suited to tell her story.

Rick has also written the introduction to Picture Taker, a 40-year retrospective of the work of photographer Ken Elkins.

The Prince of Frogtown, continues to mine his East Alabama family history for stories, this time focusing on the life of his alcoholic father. Unlike his previous two memoirs, Bragg merges his father's history of severe hardships and simple joys with a tale from the present: his own relationship with his 10-year-old stepson. This book, much like his previous two memoirs, is lush with narratives about manhood, fathers and sons, families and the changing face of the rural South. We usually have signed copies of Rick Bragg's books.

The Most They Ever Had - In spring of 2001, across the South, padlocks and logging chains bind the doors of silent mills, and it seems a miracle to blue-collar people in Jacksonville, Alabama, that their mill survived. In these real-life stories, Pulitzer Prize winner Bragg brilliantly evokes the hardscrabble lives of those who lived and died by an American cotton mill.