A complex jazz memoir of growing up black and poor in rural North Carolina.
A North Carolina native from the rural-back-woods-fishing community of Hampstead, Earl Sherman Braggs is a UC Foundation and Battle Professor of English at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Braggs is the author of thirteen collections of poetry. Hat Dancing with Miss Bessie Smith and Negro Side of the Moon are his latest. Among his many awards are the Anhinga Poetry Prize, the Cleveland (Ohio) State Poetry Prize (unable to accept, manuscript won in two places at the same time), the C&R Poetry Prize, the Jack Kerouac International Literary Prize, the Knoxville News Sentinel Poetry Award and the Gloucester County Poetry Prize. Braggs' novel, Looking for Jack Kerouac was a finalist for the James Jones First Novel Contest. Cruising Weather Wind Blue is forthcoming from Anhinga press. Obama's Children is forthcoming from Madville Press.
