Byron Herbert Reece (September 14, 1917-June 3, 1958) was an American author of poetry and novels. During his life, he published four volumes of poetry and two volumes of fiction. He was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for Bow Down in Jericho, his second volume of poetry, and received a Guggenheim Fellowship for fiction in 1952. His life is the subject of the Georgia State Drama, The Reach of Song.
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Born in Union County, Georgia on September 14, 1917, Reece began publishing poems locally while in high school, receiving his first widespread publication in 1943 with the publication of "Lest the Lonesome Bird" in the Prairie Schooner journal. Ballad of the Bones and Other Poems, collecting Reece's poetry, soon followed, in 1945. Reece was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for Bow Down in Jericho, his 1950 follow-up to that first, critically acclaimed publication. That same year, Reece published Better a Dinner of Herbs, his first novel. In 1952, he received a Guggenheim Fellowship for fiction.[1] 1952 also saw a third volume of poetry, A Song of Joy, while 1955 brought his second novel, The Hawk and the Sun and his final volume of poetry, The Season of Flesh. On June 3, 1958, Reece committed suicide at the age of forty, responding to illness and depression. During his final years, Reece also taught classes at Young Harris College to earn extra money. He was found in his office, with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart playing on the record player and his final set of student papers graded and neatly stacked in the desk drawer.[2]
The Georgia Writers Hall of Fame inducted Reece in 2001, and in 2003 a group of writers formed the Byron Herbert Reece Society. As of 2004, the Society was working on constructing a museum to the writer on the site of his family farm, which is owned by Union County. His life story is at the center of Georgia's state drama, The Reach of Song, which depicts life between World War I and World War II in the Appalachian Mountains.[3][4]