Turner Cassity

Allen Turner Cassity (January 12, 1929, in Jackson, Mississippi – July 26, 2009, in Atlanta) was an American poet, playwright, and short story writer.

Life
He was the son of Dorothy and Allen Cassity, and grew up in Jackson and Forest, Mississippi. He graduated from Millsaps College and Stanford University with a master's degree.

Cassity was drafted into the United States Army and stationed in Puerto Rico from 1952 to 1954. He attended Columbia University on the GI Bill, and received a master's degree in library science in 1955 and then moved to South Africa. He worked at the Robert W. Woodruff Library at Emory University, from 1962 to 1991, and also taught poetry there. He also cofounded the Callanwolde Readings Program, which highlights poets and writers, with poet Michael Mott.

He is buried in Forest, Mississippi. His papers are at Emory University.

Awards

 * Georgia Author of the Year Award from the Georgia Writers Association.
 * Levinson Prize for Poetry, for Devils and Islands
 * Michael Braude Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters
 * Ingram Merrill Foundation Award
 * National Endowment for the Arts Grant

Verse plays

 * Silver Out of Shanghai (1973)
 * The Book of Alna (1985)

Reviews
"Devils & Islands, Cassity's 10th collection, reinforces the image of the dapper Southerner as a satirist, and, in the words of National Endowment for the Arts Chairman Dana Gioia, '73, MBA '77, perhaps 'the most brilliantly eccentric poet in America.'"