William Price Fox, novelist and short story writer, is best known for the down-home humor of his short story collection, Southern Fried, and his depiction of the glamorous, but dissolute Nashville music scene in the novel, Ruby Red. He was born in Waukegan, Illinois, on 9 April 1926 and grew up and received his education in Columbia, South Carolina. His experiences in the small backwater towns and larger urban areas of that state, as well as his father's penchant for bootlegging, seem to have been the major influences on his work. He entered the Army Air Corps in 1943 at the age of sixteen, after successfully lying about his age, and served until 1946 when he was discharged as a second lieutenant. Returning to Columbia, he put aside his uniform to become a soda jerk at a Columbia drive-in and exempting parts of his high school education through a series of tests...