Since the early 19th century, Georgia has produced an impressive number of distinguished fiction writers, from Joel Chandler Harris, Sidney Lanier, Flannery O'Connor, and Carson McCullers to such present-day voices as Alice Walker, James Dickey, and Pat Conroy. Containing 39 stories and excerpts from novels, this first volume of "Georgia Voices" reveals a literary legacy as rich as any the country has produced. Humorous and tragic, nostalgic and cynical, romantic and realistic, the writings gathered here represent the full range of fiction that has emerged from the state's talented writers. Over the years Georgians have written about the themes and subjects that have inspired writers across history and throughout the world: family, war, hardship, ambition, love, death, change, the search for knowledge and meaning. As Hugh Ruppersburg notes in his introduction, however, the state has provided its writers with a distinct history, culture, and sense of place, Georgia's frontier and agricultural past, its Civil War experience, the rise of its cities and industries and the subsequent decline of rural traditions, and the civil rights movement have all played a part in shaping its distinctive literary landscape. "Georgia Voices" is a projected three-volume anthology highlighting the impressive achievements of Georgia writers in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry.