James Dickey – 1923-1997

Dickey earned his literary reputation as a poet (the 1965 Buckdancer’s Choice is his best-known collection) and critic, but he became a popular literary sensation with his 1970 novel Deliverance, a horror-adventure narrative of canoeing down a Georgia river. He transformed the bestselling novel into a screenplay, which was produced in a 1972 film of the same name.