Nonfiction
Foster Dickson is a writer, editor, and teacher in Montgomery, Alabama. He is the author of Closed Ranks and I Just Make People Up, and the editor of Nobody’s Home: Modern Southern Folklore.
Foster has been writing nonfiction for more than twenty years. Alongside full-length books, his publication credits also include entries in encyclopedias, articles in magazines and newspapers, and reviews of books. Below is a sampling of his nonfiction work. Click on the links to read.
Selected Essays
“Blank Spaces”
a literacy narrative, written in 2024
“Happy, Happy”
a personal essay, written in 2021
“Bringing Poetry Back Home”
a magazine article, originally published in Multicultural Review in 2009.
“The Old Agrarian-ness of an New Ethos”
a personal essay, written in 2016
“No Lonelier Place on Earth (On the Jake Blount in The Heart is a Lonely Hunter)”
an essay of literary criticism, written in 2012
“Am I Supposed to Laugh or Not? (On the Poetry of Rodney Jones)”
an academic essay, written in 2010 and 2011
“The Southern Roots of Subtext and Motivation in Four Plays by August Wilson”
an academic essay, written in 2009
Articles
Montgomery Advertiser
“Normandale: Where Everybody Knew Your Name”
published February 7, 2020
It’s a Southern Thing (Red Clay Media)
“Artists and Writers Will Love This Quiet Mountaintop Retreat”
published February 1, 2020
Multicultural Review
“Bringing Poetry Back Home”
published in Winter 2009
Montgomery Living (now River Region Living)
2007 – 2008: contributing writer (see CV/Resume)
NPR’s “This I Believe” project
“Writing is Activism”
published in January 2007
Evergreen Review
“An Interview with Ron Whitehead”
published in June 2005, issue #110
Biographical Essays
Online Biographical Dictionary of the Woman Suffrage Movement
Mary Elvira Wood • Mary A John Watson • Pearl Still (Nowlin)
Encyclopedia of Alabama
Andrew Lytle • John Beecher • Mary Ward Brown
Selected Reviews
Callaloo: A Journal of the African Diaspora
book review of The South That Wasn’t There by Michael Kreyling
published in Summer 2012
Alabama Writers Forum
book review of American Happiness by Jacqueline Trimble
published in January 2018
book review of Hard Rain by Frye Gaillard
published in February 2019
book review of Freedom’s Dominion by Jefferson Cowie
published in April 2023
book review of Versions of May by Jim Murphy
published in September 2023
book review of From Every Stormy Wind that Blows by S. Jonathon Bass
published in July 2024
book review of Glass Cabin by Tina Mozelle Braziel and James Braziel
published in July 2024
Foster Dickson 