Authors and Artists

Charles Peppers ’22, Todd C. Peppers, and Russ Ford; University of Virginia Press, March 2023

The Rev. Russ Ford, who served as the head chaplain on Virginia’s death row for 18 years, raged against the inequities of the death penalty while ministering to 28 men condemned to die in the 1980s and 1990s. His unusual ministry makes this memoir a unique and compelling read. Revealing the cruelties of the state-sanctioned violence, Crossing the River Styx serves as a cautionary tale for those who still support capital punishment.

Grant Faulkner ’87, University of New Mexico Press, February 2023

With elegant prose, deep readings of other writers, and scaffolded writing exercises, The Art of Brevity takes the reader on an exploration of compact storytelling, guiding readers to heighten their awareness of not only what appears on the page but also what doesn’t. Faulkner is the executive director of National Novel Writing Month, co-founder of the literary journal 100 Word Story, and co-founder of the Flash Fiction Collective.

Andrew Nelson ’00 and Rob Curran, Vanderbilt University Press, 2022

Based on five years of collaborative research between anthropologist Nelson and journalist Curran, Journey chronicles the plight of African and South Asian migrants moving through Latin America toward the United States. Journeyprovides an engrossing, sometimes surreal, narrative-driven critique of how state-level immigration policy fails extracontinental migrants. Nelson is associate professor of anthropology at the University of North Texas.