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University of Georgia English education graduate Robert Lamb, an author and writing instructor at the University of South Carolina, recently published his third novel titled, A Majority of One.

The novel tells the story of a high school English teacher, an “outsider” from Atlanta, in a rural Georgia town who stands up to preachers after they launch a campaign to ban selected novels from the curriculum. Refusing to “go along to get along,” she finds herself a social outcast locked in a battle to save her job and reputation, according to the book’s publisher Create Space. The book is available on Amazon, as a Kindle edition and as an e-book.

Lamb

Lamb (BSEd ’61), of Columbia, S.C., has taught writing and American literature courses at the University of South Carolina since 1991.  Before that, he worked for several regional papers including The Atlanta Constitution. Lamb has also done freelance reporting for The New York Times and book reviews for the New York Journal of Books.

His short story, “R.I.P.” was a 2009 South Carolina Fiction Project winner. In August 2009, he was named to the South Carolina Literary Map by the South Carolina Center for the Book.

Lamb was awarded an Excellence in Teaching Award by USC’s Mortar Board honor society in 2008. He also served on the faculty of the 2008 South Carolina Writers Workshop.

In 1998, with co-editor Chris Horn, Lamb published a volume of fiction by his students titled, The Class Menagerie – A Collection of Short Stories Out of USC. In 2006, with co-editor Charles Curran, he published a second collection titled, The Class Menagerie II – More Short Stories Out of USC.

He is a former director of periodicals for USC Publications and was editor of the university’s prize-winning alumni magazine, Carolinian.

Lamb’s first novel, Striking Out, is a coming-of-age novel set in 1950s Georgia. It was nominated for the PEN/Hemingway Award, a coveted prize for first novels. His second novel, Atlanta Blues, set in 1981, is about the search for missing girl by a reporter and two cops. The book was nominated for the Southern Book Critics Circle Award, made the bestseller list in Columbia, and was named in a year-end roundup of books as  “one of the three best novels of the year (2004) by a Southern writer – and maybe the best.”