John Shelton Reed is a writer and lecturer who lives in Chatham county, North Carolina. He taught for some years at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, retiring in 2000 as William Rand Kenan Jr Professor of sociology and director of the Howard Odum Institute for Research in Social Science. He was founding co-editor of the quarterly Southern Cultures and helped to found the university's Center for the Study of the American South. He was elected to the Fellowship of Southern Writers in 2000, and served as that organization's Chancellor in 2009-2011. He is an Honorary Fellow of St. Catharine's College, Cambridge University, and a parishioner of the Chapel of the Cross (Episcopal) in Chapel Hill.