Franklin Burroughs
Franklin Burroughs, born and raised in Conway, South Carolina, is the Harrison King McCann Research Professor of the English Language Emeritus at Bowdoin College. A graduate of the University of the South, he took the M.A. and Ph.D. degrees at Harvard University and served as Professor of English at Bowdoin College for more than 30 years until his retirement in 2002.
The author of three books and many essays, both personal and academic, Burroughs writes eloquently about the natural history of his childhood home in Horry County and his adult home in Maine. His prose is local and concrete, rooted in memory and in the intersections of human history, natural history and personal experience. Billy Watson’s Croker Sack (1991), a collection of essays about his growing up, was selected as an Editor’s Choice by The Book of the Month Club, reprinted by the Quality Paperback club, and translated into Japanese. Horry and the Waccamaw, a nonfiction narrative, was published in 1992 and reprinted in paperback as The River Home: A Return to the Carolina Low Country (1993). It chronicles a journey from the North Carolina headwaters of the Waccamaw River to Winyah Bay. In Confluence: Merrymeeting Bay, published in 2006, he collaborates with photographer Heather Perry, touching on the many features of the Bay’s human and natural history. This book, given for the outstanding work of literary natural history, won the John Burroughs Medal for Natural History Writing (2009).
Burroughs’ essays have been published in Harper’s, Backpacker, Kenyon Review, Sewanee Review and many other magazines, and have been reprinted in Best American Essays and The Norton Anthology of Nature Writing. His essay “A Snapping Turtle in June” was the lead essay in the Pushcart Prize Anthology for 1988-1989; “Compression Wood” appeared in Best American Essays in 1999; and the following essays were given honorable mention by Best American Essays: “A Pastoral Occasion” (1987), “Of Moose and a Moose-Hunter” (1990), “Passion or Conquest” (1998), “Return to Rivertown” (2003) and “Moving On” (2004).
His work has been honored by a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship. His essay “Lost Causes and Gallantry: Johnny Red and Sir Walter Scott” was published in the American Scholar and received the Editor’s Prize (2004). Other honors include “Deceptions of the Thrush '' published in Sewannee Review (2005) and the Cecil Woods, Jr. award for creative nonfiction (2005), given annually by the Fellowship of Southern Writers.
He lives with his wife, Susan, in Topshsam, Maine.
The author of three books and many essays, both personal and academic, Burroughs writes eloquently about the natural history of his childhood home in Horry County and his adult home in Maine. His prose is local and concrete, rooted in memory and in the intersections of human history, natural history and personal experience. Billy Watson’s Croker Sack (1991), a collection of essays about his growing up, was selected as an Editor’s Choice by The Book of the Month Club, reprinted by the Quality Paperback club, and translated into Japanese. Horry and the Waccamaw, a nonfiction narrative, was published in 1992 and reprinted in paperback as The River Home: A Return to the Carolina Low Country (1993). It chronicles a journey from the North Carolina headwaters of the Waccamaw River to Winyah Bay. In Confluence: Merrymeeting Bay, published in 2006, he collaborates with photographer Heather Perry, touching on the many features of the Bay’s human and natural history. This book, given for the outstanding work of literary natural history, won the John Burroughs Medal for Natural History Writing (2009).
Burroughs’ essays have been published in Harper’s, Backpacker, Kenyon Review, Sewanee Review and many other magazines, and have been reprinted in Best American Essays and The Norton Anthology of Nature Writing. His essay “A Snapping Turtle in June” was the lead essay in the Pushcart Prize Anthology for 1988-1989; “Compression Wood” appeared in Best American Essays in 1999; and the following essays were given honorable mention by Best American Essays: “A Pastoral Occasion” (1987), “Of Moose and a Moose-Hunter” (1990), “Passion or Conquest” (1998), “Return to Rivertown” (2003) and “Moving On” (2004).
His work has been honored by a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship. His essay “Lost Causes and Gallantry: Johnny Red and Sir Walter Scott” was published in the American Scholar and received the Editor’s Prize (2004). Other honors include “Deceptions of the Thrush '' published in Sewannee Review (2005) and the Cecil Woods, Jr. award for creative nonfiction (2005), given annually by the Fellowship of Southern Writers.
He lives with his wife, Susan, in Topshsam, Maine.
