Tom Franklin, 2001-2002 Grisham Writer in Residence at the University, has been featured in the Nebraska Review, the Texas Review, and Smoke Magazine. He was also the winner of the 1998 Writers at Work Literary Nonfiction Contest and a 2001 Guggenheim Fellowship.
Franklin’s early achievements led him to his first book, Poachers, a collection of short stories that writer Richard Ford called “a new song for the South, yet not for some mossy past because they are contemporary stories.”
Franklin does not write Southern stories about plantations and the romanticized past. He describes his work as a new look at an old territory, an industrial look. “Somebody once said that it was ‘industrial gothic’ and I like that description of it,” Franklin said.
Franklin was thrilled and surprised with the popularity of his first book. “Collections of short stories usually don’t sell well, especially first collections. So, I was happily surprised,” he said. 
Franklin, an Alabama native, graduated from the University of South Alabama in English. While there, he worked the night shift at some unusual places, including a grit factory, hazardous waste clean-up sites, and a hospital morgue. Franklin said these jobs helped him receive what he calls “a writer’s education.”
“A writer’s education is out in the world. The jobs you have, the people you know, where you grew up, the things you do, the foreign countries you visit–all those things are really good for your writing in that they broaden you,” Franklin said.
These experiences not only gave Franklin an education but they helped him learn about detail. “One of the most important aspects of fiction is the detail that a writer uses. [My early jobs] gave me great detail about strange places,” Franklin said.
His sense of detail has earned Franklin labels such as “vivid portraitist” and gives his stories “valuable and unexpected depth,” according to some in the writing community.
Writer Philip Roth said Franklin reminds him of Faulkner and particularly of the Faulkner of Wild Palms. 
“I don’t think anyone should be compared to Faulkner. It’s not fair,” Franklin said. “He’s the best writer in the last century and it seems wrong to compare a writer with one book of short stories to a writer of such a vast body of work as Faulkner’s, but a writer who writes out of a Southern tradition will ultimately be compared to him. He’s god in literature in my opinion.” 

Garreth C. Blackwell