Poachers

Tom Franklin was born and raised in south Alabama, where he worked as a heavy-equipment operator in a grit factory, a construction inspector in a chemical plant and a clerk in a hospital morgue. He now teaches fiction writing at the University of South Alabama.Poachers is his first collection. He is now at work on a novel, Hell at the Breech, also to be published by Flamingo.‘Unforgettable . . . Poachers is like a hand that comes out of the green swamp on a moonless night and pulls you from the canoe. What Poachers is really about is discovering a new writer who reminds you that you love to read.’ Tampa Tribune

‘It’s as if the author kidnapped Raymond Carver’s characters and set them loose in the Deep South.’New York Times Book Review‘I am amazed by [Franklin’s] power. I’m reminded, by the evocative strength of the prose and the relentlessness of the imagination, of Faulkner. Franklin is a vivid portraitist of these harsh human types, and his authority in depicting the natural world “along this stretch of the Alabama River” is dazzling. I can’t believe he’s not better known, but he will be, and soon.’PHILIP ROTH‘This is as strong a collection as any I’ve read in recent years. The stories are collectively and individually brilliant, imbued with a high sense of Southern Gothic and a dark sense of humour.’Chicago Tribune