Hal Crowther, critic and essayist, is the author of Freedom Fighters and Hell Raisers; Gather at the River; Cathedrals of Kudzu: A Personal Landscape of the South, winner of the Lillian Smith Book Award for commentary and the Fellowship Prize from the Fellowship of Southern Writers; An Infuriating American: The Incendiary Arts of H. L. Mencken; and Unarmed and Dangerous. Crowther’s essays “Christian Soldiers” and “Dante on Broadway,” both originally published in Narrative, were selected for the Pushcart Prize series, 2018 and 2019, respectively. He lives in North Carolina with his wife, the novelist Lee Smith.