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 […]
“Burner and Other Stories” by Katrina Denza
October 11, 2026 by Leave a Comment
The epigraph of Katrina Denza’s new short story collection, Burner: And Other Stories, is a quote from Simone de Beauvoir: “The point is not for women simply to take power out of men’s hands, since that wouldn’t change anything about the world. It’s a question precisely of destroying that notion of power.” It’s a thought-provoking […]
“Rough Cuts” by Glenn R. Miller
October 10, 2026 by Leave a Comment
Glenn R. Miller captures a fascinating and largely forgotten snippet of silent film era history in the novel Rough Cuts (Koehler Books 2026). In the early days of cinema, individual states established censorship boards to review films and determine which scenes had to be removed before exhibition. It is difficult to imagine how studios managed […]
“Sweeping the Porch” poetry collection by Sharon Perkins Ackerman
October 10, 2026 by Leave a Comment
In her poem “Metamorphosis,” Sharon Perkins Ackerman confesses: “What I’ve never understood / is the nature of custody on earth, / the casings that hold us, / whether it’s true as they say, / the scant three feet between this world and the other.” Yet throughout her luminous collection, Sweeping the Porch (Pine Row Press, […]
“Pat Conroy’s Lowcountry” by Lynn Seldon
October 7, 2026 by Leave a Comment
Pat Conroy’s Lowcountry (History Press 2026) by Lynn Seldon offers a literary travel guide to the Lowcountry of South Carolina and a glimpse into the Lowcountry heart of the incomparable author of The Prince of Tides. As a longtime friend and sometime neighbor of Pat Conroy and his wife, fellow novelist Cassandra King, Seldon is perfectly […]
October Read of the Month: “The Nurse at Baker Hospital” by Jocelyn Cullity
October 7, 2026 by Leave a Comment
Horrifying. Haunting. Gut-wrenching. All of these describe The Nurse at Baker Hospital (Regal, October 2026) by Jocelyn Cullity. Drawing on primary sources, the novel meets the highest standards of historical fiction while reading with the urgency of a thriller. Though the events are rooted in the past, the lessons they offer are not merely relevant—they […]
CHRONOS TIME OF POLITICS, KAIROS TIME OF LIFE LIVED: Gail Godwin on Life, Politics, and Citizenship by Kerstin W. Shands
October 5, 2026 by Leave a Comment
When the 2024 presidential election was approaching Gail Godwin decided to write a chronicle to record the political development, a chronicle that would also look back at important periods in her own life. Her new book, The Art of Becoming a Citizen: A Memoir (Bloomsbury 2026), raises profound questions about meaning and morality on personal and […]