Meet the Editors

Donna Meredith is publisher and editor-in-chief. Claire Hamner Matturro, Dawn Major, and Mary Ellen Thompson serve as associate editors. RIGHT: Photographs by VanessaK Photography, LLC.

Welcome!

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 […]

Ed Davis

Ed Davis has immersed himself in writing and contemplative practices since retiring from college teaching. Time of the Light, a poetry collection, was released by Main Street Rag Press in 2013. His novel The Psalms of Israel Jones (West Virginia University Press 2014) won the Hackney Award for an unpublished novel in 2010. Many of his stories, essays and poems […]

Read of the Month: “Upon the Corner of the Moon” by Valerie Nieman

Pagan rituals, visions and prophecies; commingling of myth, religion and history; poets, princes and perpetually plotting monarchs; sibling rivalry; siege and conquest. In her new novel Upon the Corner of the Moon (Regal House 2025), veteran North Carolina writer Valerie Nieman uses all this rich material—and more—to dramatize the backstory of two of Shakespeare’s most […]

Gale Massey interviews Florida author Lauren Groff about her new bookstore “The Lynx”

The Lynx Bookstore 601 South Main Street Gainesville, FL 32601 Introduction: Walking into the bookstore, I noticed the open and high ceilings, the quiet hum of shoppers, the bookstore’s staff, and immediately felt at home. To my right, a large window let in an abundance of natural light, and just beyond that was a wall of […]

“Distant Relations” by Cheryl Whitehead

Cheryl Whitehead is both a gifted poet and a gifted storyteller—and these can be two distinct, albeit complimentary talents. In Distant Relations (Loblolly Press 2025), Whitehead weaves these dual talents together into an always engaging, often uncanny collection of poetry rich with family, nature, culture, and transcendency. Her verses reverberate with turmoil and grace, all […]

Gale Massey

Gale Massey is the author of the novel, The Girl from Blind River, which received a Florida Book Award, and the collection, Rising and Other Stories. Gale’s stories and essays may be found in Lambda Literary, the Tampa Bay Times, Tampa Bay Noir, and Saw Palm. Massey, a Florida native, lives in St. Petersburg, Florida.

Claire Hamner Matturro interviews Cheryl Whitehead, author of the poetry collection “Distant Relations”

Claire Hamner Matturro: Thank you, Cheryl Whitehead, for being willing to share a bit of yourself with Southern Literary Review. First, congratulations on your very fine book, Distant Relations (Loblolly Press 2025), which is an engaging, evocative collection of poetry involving nature, family, farms, and much more. Your poems are exquisitely detailed in such beautiful […]