Perhaps the Delta’s best-known photographer, Maude Schuyler Clay, will be back in Greenwood Wednesday to sign copies of her latest book, “Delta Dogs.”
Clay will be joined at Turnrow Book Co. on Wednesday night by two renowned and award-winning authors — Brad Watson, who wrote the foreword to “Delta Dogs,” and Andre Dubus III, who will read from his latest collection of short stories, “Dirty Love.”
Clay’s latest book profiles the Delta’s “indigenous canine presence,” as she calls the dogs that feature in the stark, black and white photographs of the Delta landscape.
A noted chronicler of the Delta landscape, Clay, who was born in Greenwood and now resides in Sumner, said she first began noticing the “Delta dogs” while shooting for her acclaimed debut collection of landscapes called “Delta Land,” released in 1999.
“I just started noticing that the dogs were everywhere and that they give the landscape a certain scale, so I ended up with a whole book of dogs,” Clay said.
She said the animals, often pictured in her work foraging among a desolate landscape, kept popping up in her frame.
Watson, a noted short story writer and a native of Meridian who now teaches writing at the University of Wyoming, wrote the foreword for the book, which Clay called a “really wonderful” touch that adds context to the work.
In his foreword, Watson writes, that, “These dogs are purely dogs, as dehumanized as they can possibly be, both solipsistic and supremely objective. There is no holy isolation in the mind of a dog.”
Clay said she first worked with Watson while the two were both working at the Oxford American magazine, collaborating on a story about Mississippi fortune tellers.
“Talk about fun,” Clay said. “I took the photographs and he did the story. We traveled down to Natchez and Port Gibson looking for gypsy fortune tellers.”
A dog lover herself, Clay said she now owns four Delta rescue dogs — some of them gathered during the shooting of the current book.
“There’s a certain part that, as a photographer, you realize you can’t save everyone. I kind of had to turn off from saving every dog that I saw,” Clay said. “There are plenty of homeless animals out there that could use homes. The shelters are full of Delta dogs that are homeless.”
Clay, who once built a successful career in New York City, said she returned to the Delta in part because she felt rooted to the land.
“My family’s been connected to the Delta for about six generations,” Clay said.
A reception for the release of “Delta Dogs” kicks off at Turnrow at 5 p.m.
Dubus will host a conversation about his work beginning at 7 p.m.
Dubus is perhaps best known for his 1999 novel “The House of Sand and Fog,” which was a finalist for the National Book Award and was adapted into an Academy Award-nominated film of the same name.
• Contact Bryn Stole at 581-7235 or bstole@gwcommonwealth.com.
