Going Back to Greenfield

An emerging writer's residency revives Faulkner's farm for a new generation of Southern voices

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William Faulkner once said, “If I were reincarnated, I’d want to come back a buzzard. Nothing hates him or envies him or wants him or needs him. He is never bothered or in danger, and he can eat anything.”

Like so many writers and artists, Faulkner sought out isolation to conduct his best work, fleeing from the inevitable distractions of an engaged life in the world. He retreated from the main literary hubs of his time in favor of his family home in then-remote Oxford, Mississippi. His step-son Malcolm Franklin, wrote that when Faulkner had his “silent days,” the telephone, radio, and doorbell were all forbidden.

“What most writers need is a certain sort of thing. It’s time, where the equipment is a desk and the environment is quiet,” said John T. Edge, director of the Mississippi Lab at the University of Mississippi. “And the support is by way of stipends.”

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The Mississippi Lab is a project of the university Office of the Provost and functioning as a kind of “humanities laboratory” incubating and supporting creative work in Mississippi and the larger South. When Edge came on board in 2022, he envisioned serving area writers through a residency, similar to the now-defunct Rivendell Writers’ Colony in Sewanee, Tennessee—which he had relied on to write his book The Potlikker Papers. They just needed the perfect place.

It's almost as though Greenfield Farm was waiting for him. The property is steeped in the legacy of Mississippi’s most famous literary giant; it was, in fact, his sanctuary. Faulkner purchased the original 362.5 acres in 1938 using money he earned after selling the movie rights for The Unvanquished. Located around seventeen miles from his home at Rowan Oak, the farm became a way for him to re-establish his connection to his Mississippi ancestry, and to the land itself. He wanted, at Greenfield, to forge an identity as “a farmer who writes.”

The 1930s were an era of innovation in agriculture, called by some the “golden age of tractors.” So, Faulkner’s decision to raise mules at Greenfield, in addition to growing crops like cotton and corn, was indicative of the pursuit of a particular way of life, rather than profit. “There are a bunch of different ways that [show] this was an attempt by Faulkner to reclaim a past and set up a kind of a kind of agricultural theater,” said Edge.

The farm operated on a variation of the tenant farming system of the time, hosting nine tenant family units between 1938 and 1942, all of them African American. Many of the people who lived and worked at Greenfield inspired characters in Faulkner’s stories, including the Snopes family, who appear in several of Faulkner’s books, and the Bundrens from As I Lay Dying. The land itself inspired the McCallum farm in Absalom, Absalom!

“For a long time, we in the Deep South have taken it for granted that great writing will come up and out of here. It’s almost an it’s-in-the-water theory. But that’s just not good enough. Our nation depends on Deep South writers to help America understand itself. That’s William Faulkner past and Jesmyn Ward present. These storytellers, especially in riven moments like this one, help us understand how our past imprints on our present. And we need a new generation of voices speaking to that in this moment.” —John T. Edge

Even within the bounds of the racial inequality inherent to Mississippi’s tenant farming system, Faulkner’s experience doing business and working closely with the skilled Black farmers on his property likely impacted the way he wrote his African American characters. In an article in the Journal of Mississippi History, titled “Greenfield Farm: Faulkner, Mules, and Time,” historian Jim Gulley argues that there is a detectable shift in Faulkner’s work from before Greenfield, when he adopted more stereotypical portrayals of African Americans, to after, when he created more dynamic and independent characters, such as Lucas Beauchamp.

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Edge describes the property as a place with “deep legacy,” which served as both retreat and inspiration for one of the South’s most important storytellers. But Greenfield also holds legacies of agriculture, and African American relationships to the land, interwoven with the fraught realities of that relationship and the power structures that informed it.

When Edge came upon the property in the University of Mississippi’s books, he knew that it could be the ideal home for his envisioned residency—a place where the intricate histories and lived experiences of writers existing in the American South could be contemplated and built upon. The university had purchased twenty acres of the farm in 1990 after it went into foreclosure following several changes of ownership after Faulkner’s death. But since then, it had largely gone unused.

Once Edge got the green light, the university formed a committee of advisors comprised of Mississippi literary giants, including Beth Ann Fennelly, Ralph Eubanks, Kiese Laymon, Ebony Lumumba, and Natasha Threthewey. So far, organizers have raised $4.5 million for the project—including a $750,000 legislative appropriation—which will fund the construction of the retreat’s infrastructure.

Designed by the nationally acclaimed firm, Marlon Blackwell Architects, the campus will feature four overnight studios and a communal dining area. Some existing structures will be restored and contextualized with exhibits, and others—like the farm shed—will be transformed into day-commute studios for writers who live and work within driving distance. Mississippi writer and civil rights activist Will Campbell’s writing cabin will also be moved onto the property from its former home in Mt. Juliet, Tennessee.

“It comes back to the idea of, ‘how do you reanimate this farm that went fallow?’” said Edge. “When you walk on this land, you’ll be able to glimpse the rootedness of this space, but you’ll also see the forward projection of it, where we are growing the future generations of writers who claim Mississippi in some way, or are inspired by Mississippi in some way.”

In addition to building costs, organizers have also secured funding from the Robert M. Hearin Support Foundation to offer stipends of $1,000 per week for writers staying in the overnight studios. This was an important part of Edge’s mission to expand access to the vital “time and quiet” offered by residencies to writers of every economic class in the Deep South.

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“There are just fewer access points for writers here than in cities like New York or California,” he said. “And writers’ residencies have traditionally been the province of the middle class, really upper middle class. We wanted to democratize access to this asset and ensure that no one will pay to be in residency here.” Edge added that when he says “writers,” he does so broadly: in addition to prose writers, the residency is open to librettists, screenwriters, songwriters, poets—“people who put words on a page.”

Such an investment in the arts, in the humanities, in storytelling is notable in an age when funding remains an existential struggle for so many creative institutions. But Edge thinks it’s vital.

“For a long time, we in the Deep South have taken it for granted that great writing will come up and out of here,” he said. “It’s almost an it’s-in-the-water theory. But that’s just not good enough. Our nation depends on Deep South writers to help America understand itself. That’s William Faulkner past and Jesmyn Ward present. These storytellers, especially in riven moments like this one, help us understand how our past imprints on our present. And we need a new generation of voices speaking to that in this moment.”

Construction for the Greenfield Farm Writers Residency is expected to break ground in early 2026, with a planned early 2027 open date.

And the official logo? A buzzard. 

Learn more about the Greenfield Farm Writers Residency at greenfieldfarmwriters.org.