Southern literature is alive and well in the capable hands of Janice Daugharty, Echols County native and currently writer in residence at Valdosta State University.

Known for her distinctive and often humorous voice, an unerring eye for detail, and dedication to her characters—men and women who represent the best and the worst that South Georgia has to offer—Daugharty has made Cornerville, Ga., the fictional setting for much of her work.

Think Yoknapatawpha County and William Faulkner’s Mississippi. Or Flannery O’Connor’s army of irrepressible characters and her keen sense of place.

To be sure, Daugharty knows Georgia as well as anyone, having spent two years at Valdosta State College in the early 1960s before marrying and raising a family in the area where she grew up. She didn’t begin writing until the age of 39, though since the publication of her first novel, Dark of the Moon, as she neared 50, it’s been full-speed ahead.

In the past fifteen years, Daugharty has published widely in some of the most respected literary journals and anthologies in the South, including The Chattahoochee Review, The Georgia Review, Savannah Literary Journal, The Oxford American, and The Southern Review, and New Stories from the South, among others. 

She has also appeared on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered and is a regular commentator on Georgia Public Radio.

The author credits Joyce Carol Oates, the grand dame of American letters, and her husband, Ray Smith, the editor of Princeton University’s Ontario Review, with giving the author her first break, publishing her short story “Living Lessons” in 1993.

“Janice Daugharty is a born story-teller. Her voice is a finely honed ‘Southern’ voice that is warm, vibrant, and original; her characters seem to leap from the page, fully imagined in a sentence or two,” writes Oates.  “Best of all, her fiction is rich with surprises. Each story is like a wild, improvised ride that takes us to an unexpected destination.”

The next year saw the appearance of a novel, Dark of the Moon, and a collection of short fiction, Going Through the Change. The work was well received.

In a New York Times review of the two books, John Domini writes, “Sensuous, swift, full of sparkling twists, [Daugharty’s] is a voice so rich that a single page can be thrilling—and now there are plenty of them. . . . Even working in microcosm, this author thinks big.”

Subsequent novels include Necessary Lies (1995), Pawpaw Patch (1996), Earl in the Yellow Shirt (1997), Whistle (1998), Like a Sister (1999), and Just Doll (2004; the first installment of the Staten Bay Trilogy). Something Safe, Something Free, a short-story collection, will be published this August.

The tireless writer also has four novels ready for publication and another in the making.

Janice Daugharty will be participating in the 2008 Georgia Literary Festival on October 25th at the Charles H. Kirbo Regional Center in Bainbridge, Ga. The statewide festival is co-sponsored by Georgia Center for the Book, Georgia Humanities Council, Decatur County-Gilbert H. Gragg Library Foundation, and the Bainbridge College Foundation