Blanche M. Boyd is a writer raised in South Carolina. She has also lived and worked in California, Vermont, and New York. The collection consists of correspondence (1963-1984); notes, drafts, and proofs of her books Nerves, Mourning the Death of Magic, and The Redneck Way of Knowledge; reports on the Greensboro shootings (November 1979); and materials on the Democratic National Convention of 1980. Short stories, essays, reviews of Boyd's work, and photographs are also included. Many of the letters are long and substantive, including some retained copies of Boyd's own letters. Her report on the Greensboro shootings is based on a large number of newspaper and magazine clippings, also included in the collection, as well as interviews. Materials on Boyd's trip to China in 1983 are also found in the collection.

The collection consists of correspondence (1963-1984); notes, drafts, and proofs of her books Nerves, Mourning the Death of Magic, and The Redneck Way of Knowledge; reports on the Greensboro, North Carolina shootings of Communist Worker Party members (November 1979); and the Democratic National Convention of 1980. Short stories, essays, reviews of Boyd's work, and photographs are also included. Many of the letters are long and substantive, including some retained copies of Boyd's own letters. Her report on the Greensboro shootings is based on a large number of newspaper and magazine clippings, also included in the collection, as well as interviews. Twenty cassette tapes on the Greensboro shootings; The Redneck Way of Knowledge; and Boyd's trip to China in 1983 also form part of the collection. An index to the tapes may be found at the beginning of the collection.