About James Dickey
James Lafayette Dickey (February 2, 1923 – January 19, 1997) was an American poet, novelist, critic, and lecturer. He was appointed the 18th United States Poet Laureate in 1966. His other accolades included the National Book Award for Poetry and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Although acclaimed as a poet, Dickey is most widely known for his debut novel Deliverance (1970), which he adapted into the acclaimed 1972 film of the same name. He was previously a decorated veteran of the Second World War and the Korean War, as a navigator in the United States Air Force's 418th Night Fighter Squadron. == Early years == Dickey was born to lawyer Eugene Dickey and Maibelle Swift in Atlanta, Georgia, where he attended North Fulton High School in Atlanta's Buckhead neighborhood. After graduation from North Fulton High in 1941, Dickey completed a postgraduate year at Darlington School in Rome, Georgia. Dickey asked to be dismissed from the Darlington rolls in a 1941 letter to the principal, deeming the school the most "disgusting combination of cant, hypocrisy, cruelty, class privilege and inanity I have ever since encountered at any human institution." In 1942, he enrolled at Clemson Agricultural College of South Carolina and played on the football team as a tailback. After one semester, he left school to enlist in the armed services. During World War II, Dickey served with the U.S. Army Air Forces, where he flew thirty-eight missions in the Pacific Theater as a P-61 Black Widow navigator and radar operator with the 418th Night Fighter Squadron, an experience that influenced his work, and for which he was awarded five Bronze Stars.
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