A former storage area at the Augusta Richmond County Public Library Headquarters is being turned into a space showcasing one of Augusta’s literary sons.
The Yerby Institute is dedicated to Frank Yerby, who was born in Augusta in September 1916, according to Cheryl Corbin, the library’s writer-in-residence who is spearheading the project.
“He was an expatriate, and there’s not a lot of hoopla about him,” said Corbin.
A graduate of Paine College, Yerby became famous for his novels in the 1940s. Three of them were turned into films. Published in 1946, “The Foxes of Harrow” became a film starring Rex Harrison and Maureen O’Hara in 1947.
“The Saracen Blade” was published in 1952 and made into a film starring Ricardo Montalban in 1954, and “The Golden Hawk,” published in 1948 and released on film in 1952.
Yerby left Augusta after graduating from Paine in 1937 and attended Fisk University. In 1955, he left the United States and moved to Madrid, where he died in 1991.
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Yerby began his career writing short stories. His first short story, “Health Card,” was published in “Harper’s Magazine” in 1944 and won the O’Henry Memorial Award for best short story, according to his biography at the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame website.
The story focused on the “emotional and psychological impact of racism on a young African-American soldier, whose young wife is assumed to be a prostitute by a group of white military policemen,” the bio said.
His early short stories dealt with the issue of racism, but his novels were in the historical fiction genre often with white characters. His book “A Woman Called Fancy” was set in Augusta, Corbin said.
Yerby’s parents were a mixed-race couple. His father was black, and his mother was white. He faced racism early in his life. It was the issue of racism that led him to move to Spain, the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame bio said.
“He didn’t want to write about the black experience in the South,” Corbin said. And he was often criticized for it.
Prior to the pandemic, Corbin was tied to a few events that honored Yerby’s literary legacy.
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The Augusta Literary Festival began as an annual event at the library in 2011 before it transitioned to a biennial one. The festival awarded an author the Yerby Award for Fiction. The pandemic cancelled the 2020 festival, and Corbin said she doesn’t know when it will return.
Also prior to the pandemic, the library was the site of a Yerby film festival on the anniversary of his birth in 2019. It featured “The Foxes of Harrow” and “The Golden Hawk.”
Movie posters are part of the Yerby collection at the institute as well as some first editions of his novels. The institute will be a place where people can not only learn about the author, but learn about the craft of writing as well.
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Corbin said a goal of the institute will be to inspire a new generation of writers and will work with five writers annually.
“When we do open it, it will be a quiet space for writers,” she said.
Charmain Z. Brackett is the Features Editor for The Augusta Press. Reach her at charmain@theaugustapress.com.
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