Westminster English Professor's Book Available "On-Line"

Snakes, Butterbeans, and the Discovery of Electricity by Dr. James Perkins, professor of English at Westminster College, is now available on-line at www.mupress.org, the website of Mercer University Press.

The book explores the innocence of Four-eyes, a Kentucky boy who grew up in the 1940s. Through a series of stories about his family, his childhood pranks, and his vivid imagination, this nostalgic and funny book goes down the forgotten paths and pitfalls of childhood. In the fashion of the truest Southern storytellers, Perkins invites the reader to come in, stay awhile, and listen.

Perkins, who has been with Westminster since 1973, earned his undergraduate degree from Centre College, his master's from Miami University, and his Ph.D. from the University of Tennessee. During the fall term of 1998, he was a Fulbright Visiting Professor at Seoul National University in Korea. He has also been honored as a Henderson Lecturer and McCandless Fellow. His publications include three chapbooks of poetry, For the Record: A Robert Drake Reader (a collection edited with Randy Hendricks), and collections of short stories, and Southern Writers at Centuries End, (a collection of essays co-edited with Jeffrey Folks).

For more information, contact Perkins at (724) 946-7347 or e-mail jperkins@westminster.edu. Excerpts from the book are available at www.mupress.org.