Taylor Brown

I’m thrilled to announce that I’ll be the 2026 John Updike Tuscson Casitas Fellow. Here’s the official announcement from the John Updike Society:

In perhaps its most competitive year, with at least a third of the 138 applicants being highly accomplished writers and artists, a trio of judges from The John Updike Society selected Taylor Brown as the recipient of the 2026 John Updike Tucson Casitas Fellowship. The award consists of a two-week residency at the Mission Hill Casitas within the Skyline Country Club in Tucson, Arizona—casitas that John Updike owned and where he wrote during a part of each spring between 2004-09. The casitas stay is made possible by a generous donation from Updike Society members Jan and Jim Emery, owners of the casitas. The fellowship includes a $1000 prize provided by the Society, which administers the fellowship.

While staying at the Casitas, Brown will work on Rise, River, Rise, a literary novel-in-progress set amid the continent’s largest blackwater wetland, the Okefenokee Swamp. The novel interweaves deeply researched swamp history and lore with a contemporary storyline of environmental activists (“tree sitters”) trying to halt mining activity in the area.

Fellowship coordinator Robert Luscher said that the judges were unanimous in their selection, impressed by Brown’s high level of meticulous research reminiscent of the research Updike did for many of his novels, and by a narrative construction and character development that was compelling on multiple levels. “We perceived echoes of Mark Twain and Richard Powers in the scene that was submitted, enjoyed the Southern Gothic atmosphere, and were impressed by the seamless introduction of significant cultural and environmental elements,” Luscher said.

Brown, who grew up on the Georgia coast, is the recipient of the Southern Book Prize, the Montana Prize in Fiction, the Ron Rash Award for Fiction, the Audie Award in Fiction, the Weatherford Award in Fiction, and was named Georgia Author of the Year for Literary Fiction. His work has also been a finalist for the John Steinbeck Award, the Thomas Wolfe Fiction Prize, the Doris Betts Fiction Prize, and the Writer’s Digest Writing Competition. Like Updike, Brown is a prolific writer, best known for his novels: Fallen Land (2016), The River of Kings (2017), Gods of Howl Mountain (2018), Pride of Eden (2020), Wingwalkers (2022), and Rednecks (2024), with another novel, Wolvers (2026), forthcoming from St. Martin’s Press. He is also the author of a short story collection (In the Season of Blood and Gold), and his reporting, essays, and short fiction have appeared in a wide range of publications, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Garden & Gun, The Bitter Southerner, The Southwest Review, and numerous literary journals. He lives in Savannah, Georgia, where he is the founder and editor-in-chief of the custom motorcycle publication BikeBound. Besides old motorcycles, he says he likes thunderstorms and dogs with beards. You can find him at www.taylorbrownfiction.com or @taylorbrown82.

This week marks the 104th anniversary of the Battle of Blair Mountain, the largest labor uprising in US history and largest armed uprising since the Civil War. Coal miners — many of them WWI veterans — who’d been living under the iron heels and guns of company thugs and civilian vigilance committees (aka “law and order” brigades) had had enough, especially after the murder of their hero, Sid Hatfield, in broad daylight. One million rounds were fired, bombs were dropped on American soil, and “rednecks” of many different ethnic backgrounds stood together against tyranny.

This is a vital story in our nation’s history, which is more relevant than ever, and the suppression of stories like these is how we backslide from the kind of progress that would benefit all Americans, not just a small class of oligarchs that gets richer year after year while working people still struggle to meet their daily needs.

This is a story that needs to be taught in schools, and the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum’s Education Advisory Panel has put together a Reading Guide and Lesson Plans for Rednecks and several other books on the subject.

“Every student of American history should read this book.” -Matt Bondurant (Lawless) has said:

The Reading Guide is perfect for high-schoolers and meets several key standards (WV CCR ELA 11th grade aligned). You can find the Reading Guides and Lesson Plans at wvminewars.org/lesson-plans/

Thank you to the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum for keeping this history alive and in the hands of the next generation.

Please share with your teacher friends!

I don’t normally send out an email this often, but Rednecks has been selected as one of five finalists for the 2025 Audie Award for Fiction! Last year’s winner was Ann Patchett’s Tom Lake, narrated by Meryl Streep, so we’re in good company indeed.

Our narrator Ramiz Monsef did one hell of a job with Rednecks. He has incredible range, handling everything from Doc Moo’s Lebanese accent to Mother Jones’s fiery Irish brogue to Sid Hatfield’s laconic hard-man utterances, not to mention the voices of everyday miners, townspeople, and children caught up in the Mine Wars. This was no easy book for a single narrator to tackle, and Ramiz nailed it.

The winners will be revealed on March 4 in NYC at the 30th Annual Audie Awards Gala, hosted by Amy Sedaris. I don’t know yet if I’ll be attending, but pretty dang cool nonetheless.

Make my mom happy — vote for Rednecks!

And…today is the last day to vote Rednecks for the Southern Book Prize! Winners will be announced on Valentine’s Day — fingers crossed.

Southern Book Prize Ballot

Lastly, I just want to thank all of you who read my work, and those who’ve already voted. Doing what I do was a dream of mine since I was a child reading Where the Wild Things Are in my room, and y’all are the ones who continue to make it possible.