Walton Young

Biography

Dr. Walton Young, senior professor of English, teaches creative writing (novel and short story), American literature survey courses, twentieth-century American literature, and Southern literature. A member of Phi Beta Kappa, Phi Kappa Phi, Sigma Tau Delta, Blue Key, Omicron Delta Kappa, and Phi Eta Sigma, Dr. Young received his PhD in English from The University of Georgia. He received his master’s degree in English from Georgia State University, where he also received his bachelor’s in journalism. He is a graduate of the Defense Information School, the US military’s multi-service journalism school. His favorite authors are F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, and Thomas Wolfe. His favorite novel is Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, with Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! a close second. He is a member of the F. Scott Fitzgerald Society. One of his scholarly interests is biblical allusion in American literature. His short story “To the Breath of the Night Wind” was a winner in the 2005 short story contest sponsored by the Dahlonega Literary Festival. Included among his publications and conference presentations are an essay on Caroline Gordon’s Civil War novel None Shall Look Back, which was published in the Mississippi Quarterly, and conference papers on Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and Wolfe’s “The Lost Boy.” Dr. Young’s novel, A Gathering of Eagles, was published in 2011 and reprinted in 2013. Set primarily in Kingston in Bartow County during Christmas of 1919, it is rooted in time and place. The protagonist is Prescott Freeman, who returns from the battlefields of France in the First World War to the family farm. He finds himself embroiled in another conflict—this one between families—a conflict fueled by greed and revenge. The novel is about family and about the land. It deals with loss and the redemptive power of love. Dr. Young and his wife, Suzanne, split their time between their homes in Sautee-Nacoochee and in Duluth.

Research Interest

Creative writing (novel and short story) Biblical allusion in American literature The works of Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Hemingway, and Wolfe