Home to extraordinary writers such as William Styron, Tom Wolfe, and Ellen Glasgow, the state of Virginia's literary past is among the most prolific in the nation. Indeed, this state, with its beautiful and varied ecosystems--Appalachia, Chesapeake Bay, the Shenandoah Valley, and Virginia's beautiful beaches, just to name a few--seem to serve as the landscapes from which equally varied and nutritive writers spring, from the lyrical, often ecstatic meditations of Charles Wright to the poignant, dynamic narratives and lyrics of Ellen Bryant Voigt, from the moving narratives of Rita Dove to the formal mastery and wit of R. T. Smith.

Series Editor William Wright, along with Volume Editors J. Bruce Fuller, Jesse Graves, and Amy Wright, have collaborated to bring readers a wide-ranging survey in The Southern Poetry Anthology, Volume IX: Virginia. This volume seeks to emphasize the uniqueness of the poetic voices of Virginia. In doing so, the editors have acknowledged and included many celebrated writers from the recent past as well as relatively new, diverse voices that reiterate the literary fecundity of one of the most beautiful, revered, and complicated states in the American South.

WILLIAM WRIGHT is author or editor of over twenty nationally published books, with several forthcoming. Wright has been named the Georgia Author of the Year, the Georgia Editor of the Year, and won the Terrain.org Grand Prize. J. BRUCE FULLER is the author of The Dissenter's Ground, Lancelot, and Flood, and his poems have appeared at The Southern Review, Crab Orchard Review, McNeese Review, Birmingham Poetry Review, and Louisiana Literature, among others. He currently teaches at Sam Houston State University where he is Director of Texas Review Press. AMY WRIGHT is the current Wayne G. Basler Chair of Excellence at East Tennessee State University. Her nonfiction debut, Paper Concert: A Conversation in the Round, published in 2021. She has also authored three poetry books, six chapbooks, and received two Peter Taylor Fellowships to the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop. JESSE GRAVES is the author of several books, including Tennessee Landscape with Blighted Pine, Basin Ghosts, Specter Mountain, and has edited several volumes of poetry and scholarship. He is Professor of English and Poet-in-Residence at East Tennessee State University.