Appalachian Figures
William Gay wrote himself out of the backroads around Hohenwald, Tennessee, and into American letters with a voice equal parts lyric and flint. A construction worker for decades who didn’t publish until his mid-fifties, he turned the creeks, hollows, and hard bargains of Middle Tennessee into a personal territory readers now recognize on sight.
A first flare in print
Gay’s breakout came in the fall of 1998, when The Georgia Review published his short story “I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down.” The journal’s page records that it was his first-ever publication and notes the story’s later film adaptation. That kind of arrival, late, sudden, undeniable, set the tone for the next decade of his career.
The story reached a wider audience as the title piece of his 2002 collection and then inspired That Evening Sun (2009). Trade coverage at Variety and elsewhere framed the movie explicitly as adapted from Gay’s story.
Novels that map a rough-hewn Tennessee
Gay’s novels keep their compass set on rural Tennessee and the moral weather of people scraped thin by circumstance. Twilight, issued by MacAdam/Cage, was first published in 2006; an edition cataloged at the Internet Archive shows 2007 publication details and subjects like undertakers and funeral rites, true to the book’s Southern-Gothic unease.
For the full arc, from The Long Home and Provinces of Night through Twilight and the story collections, the William Gay Archive maintains an authoritative “Written Works” ledger.
What the archive gave back
After Gay’s death, friends and editors worked through his papers. Three posthumous novels emerged: Little Sister Death(2015), a Bell Witch tale; The Lost Country (2018); and Fugitives of the Heart (2021). Publisher pages confirm the details: Dzanc for the first two, Livingston Press for the last, with contemporaneous reviews and essays tracing how these works came to readers.
A rare on-camera visit to the cabin
Gay seldom sat for recorded interviews. One exception, and a priceless primary source, is the SoLost short filmed at his Hohenwald cabin for Oxford American. Chapter 16 introduced the video as “a rare on-camera interview,” quoting his deadpan joke about playing a Bob Dylan tune so often a girlfriend left: “She dumped me over that song,” he says.
Accolades, adaptations, and a fixed sense of place
Recognition arrived alongside the books. In 2007 he was named a United States Artists Ford Fellow in Literature, confirmed both on USA’s fellows roster and in his profile.
Hollywood found the novels, too. Bloodworth (2010) adapts Provinces of Night, and That Evening Sun (2009) draws from Gay’s “Evening Sun” story. The film record and reviews make the lineage plain.
Why he matters to Appalachian history
Gay’s pages preserve a slice of the Appalachian South that is both local and lasting. He centered Hohenwald and Lewis County — thinly veiled or named outright — and resisted the pull to write from anywhere else. As Chapter 16’s remembrance puts it, he was “about one particular place,” and he kept a craftsman’s fidelity to it.
Sources & further reading
First publication and film note: The Georgia Review page for “I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down.” The Georgia Review –
Film adaptation coverage: Variety review of That Evening Sun (2009). Variety
Twilight bibliographic record (2007 edition) and first-edition dating (2006). Internet Archive+1
William Gay Archive “Written Works” and “About the Archive.” Author William Gay+1
Posthumous novels: Dzanc (Little Sister Death; The Lost Country), Livingston Press (Fugitives of the Heart). Livingston Press+3Dzanc Books+3Dzanc Books+3
SoLost cabin video and Chapter 16 intro. YouTube+1
United States Artists fellowship (2007) roster/profile. United States Artists+1
Construction-work background and late start: Chapter 16 obituary; Nashville Scene profile. Chapter 16+1
Audiobooks (Twilight, The Long Home, I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down). Audible.com+2Audible.com+2