Some of the best American writing of this century was done by my personal hero(ine) Flannery O'Connor. I think she would be more glorified except for the sometimes overwhelming regionalism in her stuff. If anyone who didn't grow up here can read "Wise Blood" and really relate to it, they are very insightful indeed. Our usual icon Faulkner, to me he "overwrote" his books more than anybody since John Milton. IMHO Pat Conroy is one of the finest novelists today. Just outside of Columbia there is a little community that was the home of a really bad poet back before the turn of the century, and he is celebrated for the sheer awfulness of his work. A sample, and this is supposed to rhyme:

Alas for the South, her verses grow fewer, She never was much for literature.

Colorful, eh? Chet