John Shelton Reed, Vice-Chancellor of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, taught for 31 years at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and helped found the Center for the Study of the American South and the quarterly Southern Cultures. He is the author or editor of 18 books, including Whistling Dixie: Dispatches from the South and, most recently, Holy Smoke: The Big Book of North Carolina Barbecue (with his wife, Dale Volberg Reed).