One of the most significant early works of Robert Penn Warren (1905-1989) —the American writer and literary critic who is the only person to have won Pulitzer Prizes in both fiction and poetry —The Ballad of Billie Potts has, in the decades since it was released in Warren’s 1943 volume Selected Poems, proven far more universal than its setting between the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers in western Kentucky might suggest.

Now, publisher Bunim & Bannigan, Ltd. makes this classic of mid-century American literature available to the modern reader with the release of a new edition featuring a thought-provoking new introduction from John Burt and powerful, fantastic-realist illustrations by artist P. John Burden.