The Southern Literary Review celebrates Southern authors and their contributions to American literature. We feature classic writers who have defined Southern literature, and we highlight emerging authors with interviews, profiles, and book reviews. We support independent bookstores. If you subscribe to our newsletter, please add southernliteraryreview@comcast.net to your email contacts list so that the newsletter doesn’t […]
“Dirt Songs” by Kari Gunter-Seymour
May 15, 2024 by Leave a Comment
In Dirt Songs (Eastover Press 2024), Kari Gunter-Seymour proves she is at the top of her game by evoking both the wild energy and lustful passion of youth and the regrets such indulgences oft engender later in life. Other poems in the collection beautifully capture the natural world of Appalachia through precise language and fresh […]
“Hell Put to Shame, the 1921 Murder Farm Massacre and the Horror of America’s Second Slavery” by Earl Swift
May 15, 2024 by Leave a Comment
If you’re noticing the 1921 date in the subtitle of Hell Put to Shame (Mariner Books 2024) and thinking debt “peonage” is a past atrocity, forget it. Also known as debt slavery, the practice lives on, often targeting poor, unemployed, and homeless people. Today, it’s often immigrants. In 2010, a federal grand jury, author Earl […]
“Because I Loved You” by Donnaldson Brown
May 14, 2024 by Leave a Comment
In some ways, the broad scope of Because I Loved You (She Writes Press 2023) by Donnaldson Brown never fully transcends its opening chapters about the impact of a first love. The novel spans several decades in a relationship between a couple who first fall in love as adolescents. The novel’s early sections which involve […]
“Night Watch” by Jayne Anne Phillips wins Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
May 14, 2024 by Leave a Comment
The Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in Weston, West Virginia, stands at the center of Jayne Anne Phillips’ latest novel, Night Watch (Knopf 2023). It won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, is long-listed for the National Book Award in Fiction, and is a New Yorker Best Book of the Year. The Civil War’s aftermath of wounded men and […]
“Glass Cabin” by Tina Mozelle Braziel and James Braziel
May 14, 2024 by Leave a Comment
Glass Cabin (Pulley Press April 2024) is a singularly beautiful book, radiant with life-affirming prose and poetry from husband-and-wife team Tina Mozelle Braziel and James Braziel. In alternating voices, Jim and Tina tell a vivid, engaging story of how they built a house. Not just any house, mind you, but a cabin constructed in the […]
Adam Lazarus, Jerry Grillo, & Dawn Major at Brimstone Restaurant & Tavern
May 12, 2024 by Leave a Comment
Three authors to appear at Brimstone Restaurant and Tavern in Alpharetta May 21. Adam Lazarus, Jerry Grillo, and Dawn Major will headline an evening of entertainment, “Paying Homage to America! Click here to register.