Burroughs, Franklin Gorham, Jr. | South Carolina Public Radio

"B" is for Burroughs, Franklin Gorham, Jr. (b. 1942). Essayist. environmentalist, educator. After graduating from USC, Burroughs obtained his Ph.D. from Harvard. From 1968-2000, he taught at Bowdoin College in Maine. His essays appeared in Best American Essays in 1987 and 1989. In 1991, he published his own collection of essays, Billy Watson’s Croaker Sack. Burroughs’s work is often compared to that of New England poet, Henry David Thoreau. His book Horry and the Waccamaw was reprinted in 1998 with the title, The River Home: A Return to the Carolina Low Country. The book tells the story of Burroughs’s canoe trip down the Waccamaw River, focusing on Horry and Georgetown Counties. “Where you’re from,” wrote Franklin Gorham Burroughs, Jr., “is never simply a matter of geography. It involves intersections of history, economics, [and] family.”