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 […]
“King Cal” by Peter McDade
August 17, 2026 by Leave a Comment
King Cal (Trouser Press 2025), Peter McDade’s third novel, opens with an abrupt moment of loss. By the bottom of the first page, Calvin “has managed to lose his band and his girlfriend, and [realized that] it turns out fighting with people you love drains you emotionally and physically.” A few hours after his girlfriend […]
Read of the Month: “Abundant Life: New and Selected Poems” by Hank Lazer
August 5, 2026 by Leave a Comment
Eclectic in theme and form, powerful in reach, and electric in impact, Abundant Life: New and Selected Poems (Chax Press 2025) by poet, scholar, and educator Hank Lazer is an intelligent collection of works selected from fifteen prior books, as well as new poems. This generous sharing of his poetry spans the years from 1994 […]
“Dancing Woman” by Elaine Neil Orr
August 3, 2026 by Leave a Comment
Elaine Neil Orr’s Dancing Woman (Blair, 2025) is a delicately visceral interrogation of what it means to be a woman in search of herself and what it costs when every choice—and every failure to choose—reshapes everything around her. The story is set in the 1960s, in northern Hausa country, Nigeria, during the years between the […]
Betty Joyce Nash interviews John P. Loonam, author of “The Price of Their Toys: Stories of Men and Boys”
August 3, 2026 by Leave a Comment
Betty Joyce Nash crossed paths with John P. Loonam, author of The Price of Their Toys (Cornerstone Press 2026) when Betty Joyce and co-editor Deirdra McAfee chose John’s story, “Action Adventure,” for the anthology Lock & Load: Armed Fiction, (University of New Mexico Press 2017). John P. Loonam’s fiction has appeared in The Madison Review, Modern Shorts (an […]
“Dirty Myrtle” by Kennedy Weible
August 2, 2026 by Leave a Comment
Dirty Myrtle (Apprentice House 2026) by Kennedy Weible is an oft-times zany crime caper novel set in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and it moves at a furious pace, filled with quirky plot twists, unconventional characters, and even quirkier twists of fate. In that regard, it is comparable to the zany crime caper novels of Tim […]