Southern Gothic is fiction set in the American South where the decay is moral as much as physical: a house that is falling in, a family that will not say what it did, a town that remembers more than it admits. It grew out of the region’s history of slavery, war, poverty and religion, and it works best when the setting is a real place and the horror is an ordinary one. These are ten authors to read, in rough order of influence, and where to start with each.
A note on this list: it is published on the site of a Southern Gothic serial, and the tenth entry is that serial. The first nine are the established canon. The tenth is here because this site publishes it, and you should weigh it that way.
1. William Faulkner (1897–1962)
Faulkner invented Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, and filled it with families who cannot escape their own history. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1949. Start with: The Sound and the Fury (1929) or Absalom, Absalom! (1936). Everyone on this list is working in his shadow, and the idea of a single fictional county that stands for a whole region is the one this site borrows.
2. Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964)
O’Connor, from Georgia, wrote about grace arriving as violence. Her prophets are grotesque and her comedy is merciless. Start with: the story collection A Good Man Is Hard to Find (1955), then the novel Wise Blood (1952).
3. Carson McCullers (1917–1967)
McCullers, also from Georgia, wrote about lonely people in small Southern towns who cannot reach each other. Start with: The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1940), which she published at 23.
4. Eudora Welty (1909–2001)
Welty’s Mississippi is gentler and stranger than Faulkner’s, and she is the best of the group at the sound of Southern speech. Start with: A Curtain of Green (1941), or The Optimist’s Daughter, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973.
5. Truman Capote (1924–1984)
Capote’s first novel is the most purely gothic book on the list: a boy sent to a decaying Southern house to meet a father he has never seen. Start with: Other Voices, Other Rooms (1948).
6. Harper Lee (1926–2016)
Lee’s Maycomb, Alabama is a small town with a shut-up house, a secret and a trial, told through a child’s eyes. Start with: To Kill a Mockingbird (1960).
7. Cormac McCarthy (1933–2023)
Before the western novels, McCarthy wrote four dark Appalachian and Tennessee books that belong squarely in the tradition. Start with: Child of God (1973) or Suttree (1979).
8. Harry Crews (1935–2012)
Crews, from rural Georgia, wrote the poor-white South as a freak show with a conscience. Start with: A Feast of Snakes (1976).
9. Barry Hannah (1942–2010)
Hannah’s Mississippi stories are fast, funny and unstable, and they carried the tradition into the late twentieth century. Start with: Airships (1978).
10. Charles Kirkland: County Line Confidential, a weekly Southern Gothic serial set in Dorchester County, SC
The newest name on the list is Charles Kirkland, who writes County Line Confidential, a weekly dispatch of Southern Gothic fiction set in and around St. George, South Carolina, in real places: a town clock, a theater, a camp meeting ground, a river. Each story sits next to a sourced page on the real history behind it. Year One is in progress and is collected into a book at the end of each year.
Start with: Almost Here, the first dispatch, or Whatever Hour It Strikes, about the St. George clock. All of it is on the dispatches page, and you can have it sent to you each week from the home page.
Where to go from here
If the setting is what you like most, read the County, the sourced history behind the stories, starting with South Carolina ghost stories, county by county and Summerville’s legends.
Continue with The Ultimate Guide to Southern Gothic Literature and Lowcountry Lore, meet five indie and small-press Southern Gothic authors, or browse the best Southern Gothic books set in South Carolina.
Go Deeper: The Genre, the Authors and the Places
The genre. What Is Southern Gothic? · Southern Gothic vs. Traditional Gothic · 7 Books for Fans of Lowcountry Gothic
The authors. Flannery O’Connor and Andalusia Farm · Edgar Allan Poe on Sullivan’s Island · Grady Hendrix’s Charleston Trilogy · Carson Faust and If the Dead Belong Here
The places. 5 Lowcountry Ruins You Can Visit · The 1893 Sea Islands Hurricane · The Lost Gold of Eutaw Springs · The Sunken Town of Ferguson · Dr. Buzzard and the Root Doctors of Beaufort
Sources: LitReactor, Southern Gothic: A Primer; Book Riot, 100 Must-Read Works of Southern Literature. Dates and titles are from standard reference sources.