Tom Poland

Photo, Botany Bay Road, Edisto Island—Robert C. Clark

(Visitors: New posts: New Book Underway, Anthony Shoals)

A Southern writer, Tom Poland’s work has appeared in magazines throughout the South. He’s published five books and more than 500 magazine features. In 1996, Reckon magazine published his literary feature, “Deliver Me from Leviathan,” on James Dickey. Excerpts were published in The World As A Lie–James Dickey, the Dickey biography by Henry Hart. The University of South Carolina Press has published three of his books, most recently, Reflections of South Carolina, now in its third printing. For six years, Tom worked as a scriptwriter and cinematographer, working primarily along the South Carolina Lowcountry and its barrier islands. While filming on a primitive barrier island one evening, fog rolled in trapping him overnight. That experience led to his novel, Forbidden Island, and the mythical Georgialina. Currently, he’s writing a book about the blues and how the music evolved to create the shag and beach music phenomenon in the Carolinas. A Lincolnton, Georgia, native and University of Georgia graduate, he lives in Columbia, South Carolina. He’s a big fan of Macintosh computers & is a season ticket holder/supporter of the Georgia Bulldogs.

Favorite Quotes On Writing and Creativity:

Writing is a kind of smoke, seized and put on paper. —James Salter

I never wanted to be well rounded, and I do not admire well-rounded people nor their work. So far as I can see, nothing good in the world has ever been done by well-rounded people. The good work is done by people with jagged, broken edges, because those edges cut things and leave an imprint, a design. —Harry Crews