Alan Huffman
Alan Huffman is an American author and journalist from Bolton, Mississippi. He is the author of five nonfiction books. He has contributed numerous articles to leading newspapers and magazines.
Life and work
Huffman has contributed to The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, International Business Times, Smithsonian, Oxford American, Outside, Preservation, Lost, American Legacy, Newsweek, Washington Post Magazine, The Huffington Post and The Daily Beast. He has appeared on numerous TV and radio shows, including The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, NPR's All Things Considered, and Fox & Friends.
He moved the Holly Grove Plantation House from near Port Gibson, Mississippi to Bolton, Mississippi in 1990. The home is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Ten Point: Deer Camp in the Mississippi Delta, (1997) was his first book. It is a photo-essay, exploring decades of the Issaquena County wilderness of the Mississippi Delta. Huffman wrote the text as a setting for photographs by his grandmother Florence Huffman, who frequently accompanied her husband and friends to the hunting camp. Her photographs spanned the period of 1926 to 1972, when developers and the Corps of Engineers took over the area. This territory was the setting for William Faulkner's short story "The Bear".
Mississippi in Africa: The Saga of the Slaves of Prospect Hill Plantation and Their Legacy in Liberia (2004) explores two related but different worlds. It reveals the settlement of Mississippi-in-Africa, in present-day Sinoe County, Liberia, as well as the slave world at Prospect Hill Plantation, which they left behind. This colony, initiated in the 1830s to relocate freed slaves by the Mississippi chapter of the American Colonization Society, was later incorporated into the independent nation of Liberia.
Sultana: Surviving the Civil War, Prison, and the Worst Maritime Disaster in American History (2009) follows four young Union soldiers through a series of survival challenges during and after the American Civil War, including their capture and imprisonment. It culminates with their surviving the explosion and sinking of the riverboat Sultana, in which 1700 people died; it was the worst maritime disaster in American history.
We're with Nobody: Two Insiders Reveal the Dark Side of American Politics (2012), co-authored with Michael Rejebian, describes the authors' work for 18 years as opposition researchers. During this period they studied candidates ranging from presidential appointments and congressional representatives, down to local school board members. it is an inside look at a little-understood aspect of American politics.
Here I Am: The Story of Tim Hetherington, War Photographer (Grove Press, 2013), is about the life of photojournalist Tim Hetherington. He covered conflicts in the African nation of Liberia, Sierra Lione, Darfur, Nigeria, Afghanistan and Libya. Hetherington had an artistic eye and focus on revealing the lives of his subjects, which set him apart from other conflict photographers. Hetherington was nominated for an Academy Award (with codirector Sebastian Junger) for the documentary film Restrepo. He was killed in Libya, alongside photographer Chris Hondros, on April 20, 2011, while covering that nation's revolution.