TED GELTNER, MICHAEL CONNELLY AND STEVE ONEY DISCUSS BLOOD, BONE AND MARROW: A BIOGRAPHY OF HARRY CREWS

Skylight Books Podcast Series

Blood, Bone and Marrow: A Biography of Harry Crews (University of Georgia Press)

On what would have been Harry Crews' 81st birthday, we celebrate the lasting literary legacy of one of the most singular voices in American letters.

In 2010, Ted Geltner drove to Gainesville, Florida, to pay a visit to Harry Crews and ask the legendary author if he would be willing to be the subject of a literary biography. His health rapidly deteriorating, Crews told Geltner he was on board and would even sit for interviews and tell his stories one last time. “Ask me anything you want, bud,” Crews said. “But you’d better do it quick.” The result is Blood, Bone, and Marrow, the first full-length biography about one of the most unlikely figures in 20th Century American literature, a writer who emerged from a dirt-poor South Georgia tenant farm and went on to create a singularly unique voice of fiction.

With books such as Scar Lover, Body, and Naked in Garden Hills, Crews opened a new window into southern life, focusing his lens on the poor and disenfranchised, the people who skinned the hogs and tended the fields, the “grits,” as Crews affectionately called his characters and himself. He lived by a code of his own design, flouting authority and baring his soul, and the stories of his whiskey-and-blood soaked lifestyle created a myth to match any of his fictional creations. His outlaw life, his distinctive voice and the context in which Harry Crews lived combine to form the elements for a singularly compelling narrative about an underappreciated literary treasure.

Praise for Blood, Bone and Marrow:

"Harry Crews was a uniquely gifted and haunted storyteller. Novelist, journalist, memoirist he made each form his own in a way no one else had before or since. The pages that follow in this absorbing biography detail this and reach into the guts of the experiences that formed him and gave him a voice that was sad, brutal, and funny. Harry said that when it came to writing the truth about himself or anything for that matter he was not as interested in facts as he was in memory and belief."--Michael Connelly, from the Foreword

"In Blood, Bone, and Marrow Ted Geltner gives us a fast-paced narrative of the crazy, violent, tragic, and memorable life of Harry Crews. Geltner knew Crews and produces a book worthy of its subject. This is an excellent first-wave biography that will be a joy to all Harry Crews fans and will be an invaluable resource for scholars and enthusiasts alike.--Taylor Hagood, author of Faulkner, Writer of Disability

Ted Geltner is an associate professor of journalism at Valdosta State University, adviser to the campus newspaper, and author of Last King of the Sports Page: The Life and Career of Jim Murray. He worked for seventeen years as a writer and editor at a number of newspapers, including theGainesville Sun, the Scranton Times Tribune, and the Ocala Star-Banner. For more information, please visit www.bloodboneandmarrow.com.

Michael Connelly is the author of the recent #1 New York Times bestsellersThe Drop, The Fifth Witness, The Reversal, The Scarecrow, The Brass Verdict, and The Lincoln Lawyer, as well as the bestselling Harry Bosch series of novels. He is a former newspaper reporter who has won numerous awards for his journalism and his novels. He spends his time in California and Florida.

Steve Oney was educated at the University of Georgia and at Harvard, where he was a Nieman Fellow. He worked for many years as a staff writer for theAtlanta Journal-Constitution Magazine. He has also contributed articles to many national publications, including Esquire, Playboy, Premiere, GQ and the New York Times Magazine. Oney lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Madeline Stuart. And The Dead Shall Rise is his first book.