13 Facts About Brainard Cheney

Brainard Cheney was an American novelist, playwright, speechwriter and essayist from Georgia who was associated with the Southern Agrarians literary movement.

In 1908, when Cheney was age eight, his father died, leaving his mother to raise him and two sisters.

In 1920, Brainard Cheney entered Vanderbilt University, but dropped out after the first year.

Brainard Cheney then worked for a few years as a school principal, bank clerk and manager of a timber camp.

In 1924, Brainard Cheney attended the University of Georgia in the summer, then restarted at Vanderbilt, At Vanderbilt, Brainard Cheney becoming friends with many of the Fugitives poets and Agrarian writers at that school.

Brainard Cheney took courses under John Crowe Ransom and shared a room with Robert Penn Warren.

In 1925, Brainard Cheney left Vanderbilt to work at the Nashville Banner, where he stayed until 1940.

In 1943, Brainard Cheney received a staff job with a US Senate subcommittee, working there until 1945.

In 1953, Cheney was hired as the public relations director for Tennessee governor Frank G Clement.

That same year, Brainard Cheney published his third novel This is Adam.

Brainard Cheney assisted Warren with writing some speeches in Warren's novel, All the King's Men.

Brainard Cheney's novels reveal his desire for a return to a simpler way of life, one founded on natural cycles and rooted in an appreciation of the land.

In 2016, Brainard Cheney was inducted in the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame.