Thomas Gerald Franklin is an American writer originally from Dickinson, AL. After high school, Franklin worked his way through college, earning a B.A. at the University of South Alabama, in Mobile. He completed his M.F.A. at the University of Arkansas, in 1998 where he met his wife, poet Beth Ann Fennelly.
He is currently an associate professor at the University of Mississippi.
Though some characterize Franklin as being a crime writer, his fiction is much more diverse, and he is best described as being a Southern writer, who is often compared to Cormac McCarthy and Flannery O'Connor.
Franklin's first book is collection of ten short stories, Poachers (1999), the title story of which won the Edgar Award for Best Mystery Short Story. In an interview for the website Mississippi Writers and Musicians, its author writes of the book as being stories that address the injustice and irony that life can sometimes have as well as the corruption present in daily life.
His first novel, Hell at the Breech (2003), is better described as being regional fiction. It is a fictionalized version of an 1892 feud called the Mitcham War that took place in Clarke County, AL, near the author's home.
Other books include Smonk (2006), Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter (2010), which won the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger Award, and The Tilted World (2013), which Franklin co-wrote with his wife.
