Major Works
- Vanishing Georgia: Photographs from the Vanishing Georgia Collection, Georgia Department of Archives and History (Editor, 2002)
- Listening to the Voices: Stories from the Flannery O’Connor Award (Editor, 1998)
- Distant Friends and Intimate Strangers (1996)
- The Flannery O’Connor Award: Selected Stories (Editor, 1992)
- Sarah Morgan: The Civil War Diary Of A Southern Woman (1991)
- The New Writers of the South: A Fiction Anthology (1987) Charles East (Editor)
- Baton Rouge a Civil War Album Signed (1977)
- Where the Music Was: Fifteen Stories (1965)
- The Journalistic Career of Henry Watkins Allen (Thesis, 1962)
- Four Louisiana Civil War Stories (1961)
- Short stories and reviews in many magazines including Southern Review, Sewanee Review, and Virginia Quarterly Review
Charles East: A Biography
Charles East was born in Shelby, Mississippi, on December 11, 1924, to Elmo M. and Mabel (Gradolph) East. He married Sarah Simmons and received a B. A. in 1948 and an M. A. in 1962 from Louisiana State University. After his graduation from LSU, Charles and Sarah moved to New York City in 1948 where he worked for Collier’s magazine as an editorial assistant.
He then became a reporter and then editor of the Baton Rouge Morning Advocate (1949 to 1957). From 1958 to 1962, East worked for the State-Times before becoming the editor and then director of the Louisiana State University Press. From 1980 to 1983 he was editor and director of the University of Georgia Press. He served as the editor of the Flannery O’Connor Award series from 1981 to 2001.
East was an editor, a newspaperman, an author, a freelance writer, and collected photographs. His papers are in the Louisiana State University library.
His best known works are Where the Music Was: Fifteen Stories (1965), a collection of his own writings, which won the Henry Bellaman Award, and Distant Friends and Intimate Strangers (1996).
East died in 2009 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.