Linked to the Past Series – Voices Four – “What I Write About: Death and Old Women”

In this series, we are going to bring you voices from the past – recordings recently found of four of our speakers from the years 1973-1975.

This second voice is that of a writer, Robert Drake, talking about his hometown, Ripley, Tennessee, and the origin of his characters.  “What I Write About:  Death and Old Women” is the title of one of his works, and his answer when anyone asks about what he writes.

This was recorded on June 1973 in Fulton, KY and here for the Society he discusses his early life which was populated with old maids and women sipping their tea while gossiping, whom he loved and immortalized in his fiction.

Dr. Drake was a professor of English at the University of Tennessee at Martin from 1973-99, University of Tennessee, 1965-73, University of Texas, Austin 1961-65.  A collection of his works, “For the Record: A Robert Drake Reader”, published at the time of his death in June 2001, is still available from online booksellers.  Earlier works include a collection of short stories, Amazing Grace (1965), and other collections, The Single Heart (1971), the Burning Bush (1975), The Home Place (1980), Survivors and Others (1987), My Sweetheart’s House (1993) and What Will You do for an Encore? (1996)