These fifteen essays assess the work of the women of the third generation of Southern writers. While the Southern Literary Renaissance was initiated by a generation of writers, the leading members of whom were men--among them William Faulkner, Thomas Wolfe, Robert Penn Warren--the next generation introduced some major female talents, in particular Eudora Welty, Flannery O'Connor, and Carson McCullers. This book hails the third generation, of predominantly female writers, whose major works have been published during the period from 1950 to the present.