George Scarbrough was born in a clapboard cabin in Patty, Polk County, Tennessee in 1915. He was the third of seven children in a family of sharecroppers which moved frequently around the County during his early years. He was an avid reader from his earliest years, and showed literary inclinations which seemed very strange in the County at the time. George attended the University of Tennessee in 1935-36, The University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee for two years on scholarship during the war in 1941-43, and then taught at several schools. He entered Lincoln Memorial University in Harrogate, Tennessee and graduated with a B.A. degree cum laude in 1947. He received a Masters degree from The University of Tennessee in Knoxville in 1954, and later attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.
He has published poetry in more than 65 magazines and journals over many years continuing into the present, and recently, for example, has been published in Poetry five times in 1997. He has also published five major books of poetry and one novel. George’s first book of poetry, Tellico Blue, was published by E. P. Dutton in New York in 1949. Dutton also published two additional Scarbrough books of poetry: The Course is Upward (1951) and Summer So-Called in 1956. Iris Press published Scarbrough’s New and Selected Poems in 1977, and it was greeted with widespread acclaim. St. Luke’s Press published George’s novel, A Summer Ago in 1986. Iris Press published his most recent book, Invitation to Kim, in 1989, and it was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1990.