College of Charleston English professor and bestselling author Bret Lott has been inducted into the South Carolina Academy of Authors’ Literary Hall of Fame.

Bret Lott

College of Charleston English professor Bret Lott

 Lott is the bestselling author of fourteen books, most recently the nonfiction collection “Letters and Life: On Being a Writer, On Being a Christian” and the novel “Dead Low Tide.” Other books include the story collection “The Difference Between Women and Men”; the nonfiction book “Before We Get Started: A Practical Memoir of the Writer’s Life”; and the novels “Jewel”, an Oprah Book Club pick, and “A Song I Knew by Heart.” His work has also appeared in The Yale Review, The New York Times, The Georgia Review, and in dozens of anthologies.

From 1986 to 2004, Lott was writer-in-residence and professor of English at The College of Charleston. He left to take the position of editor and director of the journal The Southern Review at Louisiana State University. Three years later, in the fall of 2007, he returned to the College of Charleston and the job he most loves: teaching.

Read Bret Lott’s take on the writing life and teaching in College of Charleston Magazine.

The South Carolina Academy of Authors was founded at Anderson University in 1986. Its principal purpose is to identify and recognize the state’s distinguished writers and to promote their literature’s influence on our cultural heritage.

The Academy board selects new inductees annually whose works have been judged culturally important. Each inductee, whether living or deceased, has added to South Carolina’s literary legacy by earning notable scholarly attention or achieving historical prominence.

Past Hall of Fame inductees include Pat Conroy, John Jakes, Josephine Humphreys, James Dickey and DuBose Heyward.