James Tillotson Whitehead (March 15, 1936 St. Louis, Missouri - August 16, 2003 Fayetteville, Arkansas) was an American poet and novelist.
Whitehead then joined his college friend William Harrison in founding the creative writing program at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville.
The story about an intellectual NFL tackle from segregated Mississippi received wide acclaim from the most respected reviewers including the New York Times, the Boston Globe and the Washington Post.
In reviewing the book for Times, novelist R. V. Cassill, wrote: "What Whitehead has achieved is to sound the full range of the Deep South's exultation and lament.
Many people, including President Jimmy Carter considered Joiner to be “one of the South’s best novels.”[2] Whitehead was constantly revising and experimenting, sometimes to a fault.