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 […]
“A Time of Witches” by Madeline Martin
October 4, 2026 by Leave a Comment
A Time of Witches (Hanover Square Press/HarperCollins, 2026) by USA Today bestselling author Madeline Martin is an intense, spellbinding dual-timeline novel about magic, love, and the power of sisterhood. The contemporary story is set in Savannah, while the older story is set in 16th-century England during the time of the Hopkins witch trials, also known […]
“Keeper of Lost Children” by Sadeqa Johnson
October 4, 2026 by Leave a Comment
Keeper of Lost Children (Simon & Schuster, 2026) by Sadeqa Johnson is an excellent historical novel of warmth and transcendence about three Black people who overcome great odds in the decades after WWII. At the heart of the novel, Ethel Gathers, the proud wife of an American military officer, is living in Occupied Germany in […]
“Happy Happy,” a novel by Corey Mesler
October 4, 2026 by Leave a Comment
When I first began reading Happy Happy (Livingston Press 2026), I wondered why my friend Corey Mesler didn’t write this book as a memoir, instead of a novel. He explains why it would have been more difficult to write the painful aspects of his struggles as memoir, but his fiction version is so powerful, so […]
AWARD-WINNING NOVEL BOY WITH WINGS BY INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLING TALLAHASSEE-BASED AUTHOR MARK MUSTIAN EARNS MULTIPLE LITERARY HONORS
October 4, 2026 by Leave a Comment
Tallahassee-based and international bestselling author Mark Mustian is earning widespread recognition for his latest novel, Boy With Wings, published by Köehler Books. Since its release, the book has received numerous prestigious awards and honors, establishing it as one of the most celebrated independent novels of the year. Leading the list of accolades, Boy With Wings […]
“When We Were Murderous Time-Traveling Women” by Ellen Morris Prewitt
September 22, 2026 by Leave a Comment
One of the aspects I love most about Southern literature is its deep sense of place. This novel is no different. New Orleans was a perfectly chosen setting for this genre-bending tale. Like the city itself, with its legends, ghosts, history, and beliefs, When We Were Murderous Time-Traveling Women by Ellen Morris Prewitt draws on elements of […]
Jennifer Horne
September 20, 2026 by Leave a Comment
A former Poet Laureate of Alabama (2017-2021), Jennifer Horne is also the author of three collections of poems, Bottle Tree, Little Wanderer, and Borrowed Light, In addition to poetry, she is the author a collection of short stories, Tell the World You’re a Wildflower and a biography of the writer Sara Mayfield, Odyssey of a Wandering Mind: The Strange […]