| Author Bio
 RECENT AWARDS:
WAYNE GREENHAW's 22nd book, FIGHTING THE DEVIL IN DIXIE, about civil rights activists taking on the Ku Klux Klan in the late fifties into the mid-eighties, will be published in 2010 by Lawrence Hill Books, an imprint of Chicago Review Press.
Early in 2009, his 21st book, A GENEROUS LIFE: the story of W. James Samford Jr., was published by River City Publishing Company. Greenhaw is the 2006 recipient of the Harper Lee Award for Alabama’s Distinguished Writer, given annually by the Alabama Writers’ Forum and Alabama Southern Community College at Monroeville’s Alabama Writers’ Symposium.
In 2005, Greenhaw was recipient of the ninth Clarence Cason Award for Nonfiction, given annually by the University of Alabama’s College of Communication, joining such distinguished writers as Gay Talese, Rick Bragg, Diane McWhorter, and Howell Raines. Greenhaw's short story, "The Old Guy," won first place in the Hackney Literary Awards at Birmingham Southern College's 2007 Writing Today conference. BOOKS: KING OF COUNTRY River City Publishing published revised paperback edition of Greenhaw's novel, KING OF COUNTRY, about country music singer-songwriter Bobby Lee Butler in 2008. GHOSTS ON THE ROAD: Poems of Alabama, Mexico and Beyond THE THUNDER OF ANGELS:
The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the People who Broke
the Back of Jim Crow by Donnie Williams with Wayne Greenhaw was published by Chicago Review Press in the fall of 2005. Of it, Studs Terkel wrote, “This revelatory book tells the bone-deep truth of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, a
pivotal moment in the civil rights struggle.” Rick Bragg: “Donnie Williams and Wayne Greenhaw find the history that haunts us and write it smart, sharp and hard, their words falling like a tack-hammer on our conscience.” Bob Davis, editorial page editor of The Anniston Star, wrote that is “a compelling read and worthy of recommendation.” Claudia Smith Brinson, book editor of The State at Columbia, South Carolina, wrote that THUNDER is “a great read” and “remarkable and remarkably moving.”
THE SPIDER'S WEB:
Greenhaw’s seventeenth book, THE SPIDER’S WEB, a novella based on the author’s teenage experience of undergoing scoliosis surgery and being confined to a bodycast for several months, and seven related short stories was published in September of 2003 by River City Publishers.
MONTGOMERY and THE LONG JOURNEY:
Greenhaw’s MONTGOMERY: The River City was published in the winter of 2002.
His novel, THE LONG JOURNEY, set in 1919, was published in the summer of
2002. The hero, Harold Reed, is sent across the Tennessee River valley of north Alabama to fetch his older brother who is being sent home wounded at the end of the Great War. THE LONG JOURNEY dramatizes Harold’s adventures as he moves toward his objective.
In First Draft, the journal of the Alabama Writers’ Forum, reviewer Alice Stephens wrote of MONTGOMERY: The River City: “The narrative conveys a strong sense of atmosphere of the town during various periods. The most dramatic are those eras immediately preceeding and through the Civil War, the world wars, and the period of the civil rights movement and George Wallace’s tenure.”
Greenhaw, who lives in Montgomery, Alabama, and San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, is currently finishing a biography, A GENEROUS LIFE, of his friend and former business partner, William James Samford Jr. Samford was president pro tem of the Auburn University Board of Trustees, president of the Alabama Public Service Commission, and was a behind-the-scenes political adviser to several post-George Wallace governors of his home state.
After reading THE LONG JOURNEY, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Harper Lee stated, “Wayne Greenhaw is one of the best-ever writers of narrative fiction. In this new novel, he takes us on a journey that is rambunctious, picturesque, tender and heartfelt, and always entertaining.” Fannie Flagg, author of FRIED GREEN TOMATOES, wrote, “Wayne Greenhaw is simply one of the best writers in America and truly one of the South’s greatest treasures.”
BEYOND THE NIGHT:
Greenhaw’s BEYOND THE NIGHT, a remembrance, was published in 1999, recalling an incident recalling an incident during the author’s childhood , described as “part tall-tale, front-porch reminiscence, ghost story and family saga -- all the stuff the South does better than anyone else” by best-selling novelist Pat Conroy, author of BEACH MUSIC and PRINCE OF TIDES.
Winston Groom, author of FORREST GUMP, wrote that NIGHT “is a lovely, loving, bittersweet tribute to the glory of youth. Wayne Greenhaw is the best writer to come out of Alabama since Harper Lee.” 
ABOUT WAYNE GREENHAW:
Greenhaw has published several hundred articles in regional, national, and
international publications, including The New York Times, Miami Herald,
SOJOURNS, Travel HOLIDAY, Reader’s Digest, ATLANTA, Politics TODAY, Music
City News and many others. He organized and wrote the Alabama section of
Fodor’s Guide to the South and contributed six chapters to Nelles German
Guide to Mexico, published in German, English, Spanish and a half-dozen
other languages.
A prize-winning journalist, he was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University in
1972-73 while he was a reporter for The Alabama Journal in Montgomery. In
the 1980s he was editor and publisher of ALABAMA Magazine, a political,
financial and lifestyle monthly. For his career as a journalist he was
honored with the Hector Award by the Hall School of Journalism at Troy State
University. In the early 1990s he was a columnist with The Alabama Journal
and The Montgomery Advertiser.
Born in north Alabama, he was educated at the University of Alabama ,
attended the Instituto Allende in San Miguel de Allende, and studied as a
Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. He and another Nieman conducted a
seminar at the Kennedy Institute of Politics in Southern politics during the
spring of 1973.
In 1995, the Southeast Tourism Society named Greenhaw Travel Writer of the
Year.
In May of 1993 Greenhaw was appointed director of the Alabama Bureau of
Tourism and Travel by Governor Jim Folsom. In the fall of 1995, President
Bill Clinton appointed Greenhaw special President’s representative to the
White House Conference on Tourism. Greenhaw has served on the advisory
committee of the Alabama Film Commission. Governor Don Siegelman appointed
Greenhaw to the board of the Alabama Humanities Foundation. Greenhaw has
also been named to the University of Alabama Office of Student Media Hall of
Fame.
In 2004, Lieutenant Governor Lucy Baxley named Greenhaw to the Arts
Education License Tag Advisory Committee.
PLAYS:
Greenhaw’s one-actress play, ROSE: A Southern Lady, was produced at
Faulkner University in Montgomery and Harding University at Searcy,
Arkansas, where the student production won state honors in the American
College Theatre Festival.
His full-length play, THE SPIRIT TREE, about F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald
in Montgomery in 1931-32, was developed in workshop as part of the Southern
Writers Project at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival. It received a staged
reading by ASF Equity actors at the Fitzgerald Festival at Huntingdon
College in 1997.
Title List:
THE GOLFER, a novel,
J.B. Lippincott, New York, 1968;
THE MAKING OF A HERO: Lt. William L. Calley and the My Lai Massacre,
Touchstone Publishers, Louisville, Kentucky, 1971;
WATCH OUT FOR GEORGE WALLACE,
Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1976;
ELEPHANTS IN THE COTTONFIELDS: Ronald Reagan and the New Republican South,
Macmillan, New York, 1981;
FLYING HIGH: Inside Big-Time Drug Smuggling,
Dodd Mead, New York, 1984;
ALABAMA ON MY MIND, a collection of non-fiction,
Sycamore Press, Montgomery, 1986;
MONTGOMERY: Center Stage in the South, co-authored by Kathy Holland,
Windsor Publications, Los Angeles, California, 1990;
TOMBIGBEE, short stories, Sycamore Press, Montgomery, 1991;
MONTGOMERY: The Biography of a City,
Montgomery Advertiser, Montgomery, 1993;
KING OF COUNTRY, a novel,
Black Belt Press, Montgomery, 1994;
ALABAMA: Portrait of a State,
Black Belt Press, Montgomery, 1998;
BEYOND THE NIGHT: a remembrance,
Black Belt Press, Montgomery, 1999;
ALABAMA: A State of Mind,
Community Communications Inc., Montgomery, 2000;
MY HEART IS IN THE EARTH: True Stories of Alabama and Mexico,
River City Publishing, Montgomery, 2001;
THE LONG JOURNEY, a novel, River City Publishing, Montgomery, 2002;
MONTGOMERY: The River City,
River City Publishing, Montgomery, 2002;
THE SPIDER’S WEB, a novella and short fiction,
River City Publishing, Montgomery, 2003;
THE THUNDER OF ANGELS: The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the People who
broke the back of Jim Crow,
by Donnie Williams with Wayne Greenhaw, Chicago Review Press, Chicago, 2005. GHOSTS ON THE ROAD: Poems of Alabama and Mexico, River City Publishing, 2007. KING OF COUNTRY, revised edition of 1994 novel about country music, River City Publishing, 2007.
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