America’s Deep South is awash with literary heritage. Go on a tour of the homes and haunts of some of the region’s most celebrated authors and visit the places that inspired their greatest works.
The five states of the Deep South – Alabama, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee – are synonymous with southern hospitality, historical events (The American Revolution, the American Civil War, and the Civil Rights movement), music (country, blues, jazz, soul and rock and roll all originated here) and soul food but are arguably best known for their great southern authors who produced some of the most enduring novels and characters the world has ever known.
If ever there was a time to pay homage to the southern literary greats, it’s now. 2020 marked the 60th anniversary of To Kill a Mockingbird while The West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin’s take on Harper Lee’s classic novel opens at the Gielgud Theatre, London in March 2022.
To this end, we’re shining a spotlight on the haunts that fuelled the imagination of these famous authors. Here’s how to capture the magic…
Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning bestseller might have been set in Maycomb but the fictional town was inspired by the sleepy town of Monroeville, where the author grew up and where her childhood friend, Truman Capote (Breakfast at Tiffany’s), spent summers. High season for Monroeville is spring: Every April and May, a version of Mockingbird is put on by people from the community, while the jury presiding over Robinson’s trial is selected from the audience before each performance.
A short drive away lies Montgomery where iconic literary couple, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, lived from 1931-32 and where Scott worked on his masterpiece Tender is the Night. The Jazz Age couple’s Felder Avenue home is now the site of the F. Scott & Zelda Fitzgerald Museum and a two-bedroom apartment that can be booked by literary lovers on Airbnb.
Harriette Simpson Arnow, Robert Penn Warren, and Hunter S. Thompson are just some of the notable authors born and bred in the state of Kentucky while JoJo Moyes’ 2020 Sunday Times bestseller, The Giver of Stars, tells the story of a 30s horseback library in Kentucky. Little wonder then that the Kentucky Book Festival (KBF) – a celebration of reading, writing, and publishing – is such a big deal. The annual event has a rich history of supporting Kentucky authors while seeking out national bestsellers and inviting them to visit the state. The 40th KBF will take place on November 6, 2021, in Lexington. Attending authors will be announced in August at kybookfestival.org.
Experience the world of James Lee Burke and his much loved detective protagonist, Dave Robicheaux in New Iberia. “New Iberia has the most beautiful Main Street in the country,” says James Lee Burke of this landmark on the National Register of Historic Places. See for yourself with a walking tour through the three-quarter-mile district along the Bayou Teche, passing over 50 buildings dating between 1890 and 1930.
New Orleans exerted an influence on Tennessee Williams who once said: “If I can be said to have a home it is New Orleans.” Stay in the Tennessee Williams Suite at Hotel Monteleone, which featured in Williams’ play The Rose Tattoo, hop on a streetcar you can temporarily name ‘Desire’ down Saint Charles or pay tribute to the great American playwright at the annual Tennessee Williams Festival in March. Don’t miss the festival’s dramatic closing act, the Stanley and Stella shouting contest inspired by A Streetcar Named Desire. Ready, set, “Stellaaaaa!”
“I discovered that my own little postage stamp of native soil was worth writing about and that I would never live long enough to exhaust it.” So said William Faulkner, one of America’s most influential writers, whose love of literature began with a love for Mississippi.
The Mississippi Writers Trail pays tribute to the southern Gothic specialist as well as a host of other literary heroes from the Magnolia State – including Richard Wright and Eudora Welty – via a Mississippi Writers Trail marker. Visitors can learn more about these well-known wordsmiths by viewing the cast aluminium markers, each designed in the image of an open book, outside some of the places that inspired their classic works.
The Volunteer State has long been a pioneer in southern literature giving us such literary stars such as Cormac McCarthy, James Agee, Nikki Giovanni, Frances Hodgson Burnett, and Alex Roots Haley – all of whom called the Tennessee City of Knoxville home for a spell and wrote about their experiences. Visit the scenes that inspired these literary legends and walk in the footsteps of their characters courtesy of the Literary Knox Walking Tour.
Elsewhere in the state, the power of words is celebrated at the International Storytelling Centre in Jonesborough, Tennessee’s oldest town.
