About the Author

Frye Gaillard, writer in residence at the University of South Alabama, has written extensively on southern race relations, politics and culture. He is former Southern Editor at The Charlotte Observer, where he covered Charlotte’s landmark school desegregation controversy, the ill-fated ministry of televangelist Jim Bakker, the funeral of Elvis Presley, and the presidency of Jimmy Carter. Gaillard has written or edited more than twenty-five books, and his award-winning titles include the following: Go South to Freedom, Cradle of Freedom: Alabama and the Movement That Changed America; The Dream Long Deferred: The Landmark Struggle for Desegregation in Charlotte, North Carolina; Watermelon Wine: The Spirit of Country Music; If I Were a Carpenter: Twenty Years of Habitat for Humanity; Prophet from Plains: Jimmy Carter and His Legacy; and As Long As the Waters Flow: Native Americans in the South and East. Gaillard now lives on the Alabama Gulf Coast with his wife, Nancy, who teaches in the College of Education at the University of South Alabama. Gaillard's by-line has appeared in such publications as The Washington Post, The Oxford American, and the Journal of American History. He has also co-written songs recorded by Nashville artists Anne E. DeChant, Davis Raines, Pamela Jackson, Kathryn Scheldt, and George Hamilton IV.

For some years now, Frye Gaillard has examined a changing South in its large and in its small parts…. His reporting has taken on the nature of a narrative as rich and textured as the region itself.”
– Bill Kovach, former editor of The Atlanta Constitution and Curator of the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University.

Book Awards and Recognition

The Lillian Smith Book Award
NPR Great Read selection
NAACP Legal Defense Fund Humanitarian of the Year Award
Emmy Award for Regional Documentary Film Adaptation  
Governor’s Arts Award, Alabama State Council on the Arts
Gustavus Myers Award for writing on the subject of human rights
The F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald Literary Prize
The Clarence Cason Award for non-fiction 
Alabama Library Association Book of the Year
Jefferson Cup Honor Book selection  
Progressive Book Club selection
Small Press Award for History (Independent Press Association)
The Eugene Current-Garcia Award for literary scholarship
The Irene Blain Honeycutt Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Literary Arts
Foreword Magazine Book of the Year finalist
Foreword Magazine national Book of the Day selection
Southern Literary Review Book of the Month selection
“America Through America’s Eyes” – International Book Exhibition in Moscow
Best of the Best of University Presses
Arty Award, Mobile’s Best Literary Artist 
Vanderbilt University Media Hall of Fame
Spalding University MFA Common Read selection
University of South Alabama Common Read selection 
Fifty in Fifty Award for scholarship, University of South Alabama
Books showcased in the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum (Watermelon Wine) and   Levine Museum of the New South (The Dream Long Deferred)  
Three books adapted as public television documentaries