About the Cormac McCarthy Society

Join the Cormac McCarthy Society

Informally, The Cormac McCarthy Society began at The First Conference on Cormac McCarthy, held at Bellarmine College in Louisville, Kentucky in October of 1993. The Conference was organized by Bellarmine College’s Wade Hall, a leading regional teacher and critic, and by Rick Wallach, then of New York University.

Formally, The Society was founded in 1995 as a State of Florida nonprofit educational organization by scholars and interested lay readers (who had originally met at the conference) of McCarthy’s works in cooperation with Marty Priola, Society Webmaster, who was then running a small independent web site devoted to Cormac McCarthy.

The Society’s stated purpose is “to further the scholarship and general appreciation of Cormac McCarthy’s writing and to facilitate the gathering of scholars and enthusiastic lay readers alike who share a common interest in Cormac McCarthy and his work.”

The Society invites memberships from anywhere in the world and features several classifications of membership to accommodate foreign scholars and readers. As of this writing, we have several hundred dues-paying members and correspondents in eleven countries on five continents.

Society Officers

  • Steven Frye
    President
    California State University Bakersfield
    Bakersfield, California
  • Stacey Peebles
    Vice President
    Editor, The Cormac McCarthy Journal
    Centre College
    Danville, Kentucky
  • Rick Wallach
    Secretary-Treasurer
    University of Miami (Retired)
    Miami, Florida
  • Marty Priola
    Assistant Secretary & Webmaster
    Memphis, Tennessee
  • David Cremean
    Review Editor, The Cormac McCarthy Journal
    Black Hills State University
    Spearfish, South Dakota
  • Edwin T. Arnold
    President Emeritus
    Appalachian State University
  • Dianne C. Luce
    President Emeritus
    Midlands Technical College

Goals of the Society

The Cormac McCarthy Society strives to provide information about McCarthy and his work that is rarely available anywhere else. To that end:

  • We have arranged with various publishers to make books, videos and other materials about Cormac McCarthy’s work available to Society members at considerable savings through our Society Bookshop, which also provides a convenient one-stop shopping resource for non-members.
  • We sponsor an online Journal for original articles and news about McCarthy, which members may elect to receive as an annual hard-copy edition, and an online discussion forum where members may post their opinions and insights.

Conferences

The Cormac McCarthy Society sponsors a semi-annual conference, which has historically been held in Texas. We also hold panel sessions every spring at the American Literature Association annual meetings, either in California (even years) or in a major east coast city (odd years), and in the fall at the American Literature Association fiction symposium, traditionally held in Savannah, Georgia.

We hold a European colloquy approximately every two to three years, with our next one tentatively scheduled for 2013. At these meetings, our members gather to present papers, exchange ideas, view special presentations, and generally enjoy the company of others with a shared interest in McCarthy (as well as fine literature in general). For more information about these meetings, see our Conferences section.

Advocacy

The Society actively encourages and serves as a resource for scholars putting together sessions devoted to Cormac McCarthy’s works at regional and national Modern Language Association Conferences and other literary or scholarly organizations and book fairs, and regularly assists translators and publishes in other countries working to make Cormac McCarthy’s writings available in other languages.

Publications

Many of the currently available volumes of McCarthy criticism consist largely of papers and articles originally composed for Society conferences. The Society publishes occasional compilations of conference papers, an annual peer-reviewed scholarly journal, and a twice-annual newsletter for Society members, and is now embarking on a series of stand-alone special publications.

We also assist conference participants and other correspondents in publishing their own critical work in various literary and academic journals and as books through university presses and commercial publishers.

Disclaimer

The Cormac McCarthy Society is an independent, membership-based organization of readers of Cormac McCarthy’s work. We do not represent, nor are we in any way officially affiliated with, the author himself.

Contacting Cormac McCarthy

The Cormac McCarthy Society respects the author’s clearly expressed desire for privacy.
If you wish to contact him, please write to Mr. McCarthy care of his agent:

c/o Amanda Urban
International Creative Management
730 Fifth Ave.
New York, NY 10019
(212) 556-5600