| For Dori Sanders, the farming life and the writing life go hand in hand. It's
that richness of place that serves as a wellspring for her writings. A best
selling author, Dori was featured in Gourmet magazine (August 2004) and
Southern Lady magazine (July 2004). |
Photo Copyright © Paul Franklin.
| Dori can be found most days at her family's peach stand in Filbert, South Carolina, selling peaches and
autographing her books. For location of Sander's Peaches, 2101 Filbert Hwy.
(Hwy. 321), Filbert, SC, see the map below.
Get directions
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Dori Sanders is from Filbert, SC, a tiny community in York County, near Rock
Hill, SC and Charlotte, NC. Her family operates one of the oldest
African-American farms in the region (her father, a former sharecropper, bought
the land around 1915.). The farm produces fruits and vegetables and specializes
in growing Georgia Bells and Elberta peaches which are sold at an old fashioned
roadside stand.
Clover and Ms. Sanders' second novel, Her Own Place,
offer the experience of growing up in the rural South. Dori Sanders' Country Cooking
offers the taste of growing up in the rural South detailing the family recipes and stories
told at the peach stand. The eighth of 10 children, Ms. Sanders grew up on her family's
peach farm in Filbert. Working on the farm has had a lasting impact on the writer. Writing
is her way of passing down family history to the next generation. "I guess I
started writing because I wanted to leave something for my nieces and nephews,
as a way to tell them what life was like on the farm, because I know when my
generation passes, this farm will pass out of our family," Ms. Sanders
said.
She received the Lillian Smith Award for Clover. It has been
translated into numerous languages. Her Own Place is about a woman who
buys a farm, works it, raises a family and moves to town. Protagonist, "Mae Lee
represents all women who struggled after World War II, " Sanders
said.
Ms. Sanders recalls telling stories at a place known as the
"storytelling rock". Dori and her sisters and brothers would gather there for
hours sharing all sorts of stories. Those sessions at the rock led to the formal
creation of her own published stories.
The granddaughter of a freed slave, Ms. Sanders recently made an address at the
7th Annual Southern Foodways Symposium in Oxford, MS on the 40th anniversary of the
Civil Rights Act of 1964. Her speech: Promise Land: A Farmer Remembers" tied family
history, farming and the food we all share together. As Ms. Sanders said in her speech
in October 2004 at the Symposium, "Food is universal. A must for survival. Food in its own
way unites, it nourishes the body and soul."
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For more information on the area,
please visit the Olde English District web site.
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For more information on Dori's books,
visit Algonquin.com.
Email: Author@DoriSanders.com
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