Howard Bahr

Who is Howard Bahr?

Howard Bahr is an American novelist, born in Meridian, Mississippi. Bahr, who served in the U.S. Navy during the Vietnam War and then worked for several years on the railroads, enrolled at the University of Mississippi in the early 1970s when he was in his late 20s. He received his B.A. and M.A. from Ole Miss and served as the curator of the William Faulkner house, Rowan Oak, in Oxford, Mississippi, for nearly twenty years. He also taught American literature during much of this time at the University of Mississippi. In 1993, he became an instructor of English at Motlow State College in Tullahoma, Tennessee, where he worked until 2006. Bahr is the author of three critically acclaimed novels centering around the American Civil War. He currently resides in Jackson, Mississippi, and teaches courses in creative writing at Belhaven University.

Bahr began his writing career in the 1970s, writing both fiction and non-fiction articles that appeared in publications such as Southern Living, Civil War Times Illustrated, as well as the short-lived regional publication, Lagniappe which he and Franklin Walker co-edited. His first published book, a children's story entitled "Home for Christmas," came out in 1987 and was re-published in 1997 in a different edition following the release of his first novel, The Black Flower: A Novel of the Civil War. This latter book, set during the Battle of Franklin in 1864, was a New York Times Notable Book.