John Shelton Reed’s 1000 Things Everyone Should Know About the South, written with his late wife Dale Volberg Reed, is forthcoming in an updated and revised edition from Creed & Culture. John has written a score of books, innumerable articles, and a few country songs, mostly about the South one way or another; three books, and one of those songs, were written with Dale, a musician, piano teacher, and photographer. 

John’s writing has been described by the Washington Post as “provocative, instructive and amusing,” and by the San Francisco Review as “funny and erudite and annoying.” He has been Chancellor of the Fellowship of Southern Writers and is cofounder and Éminence Grease of the Campaign for Real Barbecue (TrueCue.org). For some years Reed taught at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, retiring in 2000 as William Rand Kenan Jr. Professor and director of the Howard Odum Institute for Research in Social Science. He helped to found UNC’s Center for the Study of the American South and was cofounder of  the quarterly Southern Cultures. At the University of Cambridge he is an Honorary Fellow of St. Catharine’s College and a Life Member of Clare Hall. In retirement he has turned to writing about New Orleans, barbecue, cocktails, and other subjects that offer useful tax deductions.