Phil Hudgins

Phil Hudgins has been writing and telling stories since he was 15, when he joined the newsroom of his hometown newspaper. He spent more than a half-century writing, editing, and teaching for newspapers, but he didn't dive into nonfiction books until he was 66. His first book was "I Took the Fork," a memoir of journalist, philanthropist and world traveler Lessie Bailey Smithgall, who died reluctantly at 110. The book is available at the Northeast Georgia History Center, Gainesville, Georgia, (negahc.org). His second book, co-authored with former Foxfire student Jessica Phillips Henricks, is titled "Travels with Foxfire: Stories of People, Passions, and Practices from Southern Appalachia" (2018, Anchor Books), available on amazon.com and foxfire.org. All proceeds go to Foxfire. His third book is quite different. Its title: "Grace and Disgrace: Living with Faith and the Leader of the Dixie Mafia." It's written in the voice of a woman who married Billy Sunday Birt of Winder, Georgia, when she was a month shy of 13. She became a devout Pentecostal mother of five who worked five jobs at one time to feed and clothe her family. Her husband became a hit man with the Dixie Mafia, a killer known as the deadliest man in Georgia. Phil Hudgins is a graduate of the University of Georgia and a 1974 Nieman Fellow of Harvard University.