Daniel Cross Turner, associate professor of English at Coastal Carolina University, has co-edited an anthology of poetry by contemporary Southern writers, "Hard Lines: Rough South Poetry," just released by the University of South Carolina Press. Turner edited the collection with poet and editor William Wright.

The book was envisioned as a poetry companion to the prose collection "Grit Lit: A Rough South Reader." "Hard Lines" centers on the darker side of Southern experience, presenting an array of poets from diverse backgrounds in the American South. As tough-minded as they are high-minded, the more than 60 contemporary poets and more than 200 poems anthologized in "Hard Lines" enhance the powerful genre of "grit lit." Grit lit is described as "the hardscrabble South without romanticism or false nostalgia, not through moonlight and magnolia but moonshine and Marlboros."

The volume engages literature-loving audiences with poets who have for decades formed the heart of Southern poetry and those who have built national reputations, including numerous Pulitzer Prize winners as well as U.S. Poet Laureates James Dickey, Natasha Trethewey and Charles Wright.

The anthology includes works by two of CCU's own faculty, Dan Albergotti, chair of the Department of English, and Hastings Hensel, lecturer of English.

Turner and Hensel will read from the book at the Author's Table event on Thursday, May 12, at 4:30 p.m. at 41 St. Paul's Place in Pawleys Island.

Turner is the author of a scholarly monograph, "Southern Crossings: Poetry, Memory, and the Transcultural South" (University of Tennessee Press, 2012), and coeditor of an original scholarly collection, "Undead Souths: The Gothic and Beyond in Southern Literature and Culture" (Louisiana State University Press, 2015). Turner's numerous essays on contemporary literature and film appear in prominent scholarly journals, such as Genre, Mosaic and Southern Literary Journal, and in edited collections from major academic presses, such as Cambridge, Oxford and Continuum, among other venues.

Turner joined the CCU faculty in 2010. He earned a bachelor's degree in English and in French from Hampden-Sydney College, a master's degree in English from the University of South Carolina, and a Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University.

"Hard Lines" is available from the University of South Carolina Press (sc.edu/uscpress/books/2016/7635.html) as well as major online booksellers.