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 […]
Ben Guest interviews Steve Suitts, author of “What’s In a Family Name: A Southern Family History Becomes a Gothic Mystery”
February 11, 2026 by Leave a Comment
SUMMARY: Steve Suitts was seventy-two years old when he tracked down his grandfather’s birth certificate and discovered his grandfather had died eighteen months before his father was born. What follows, in his new memoir, What’s In A Family Name: A Southern Family History Becomes a Gothic Mystery, is a detective story as Suitts traces his […]
“A Florida Dance: Life Stories from the Sunshine State” by Doug Alderson
February 10, 2026 by Leave a Comment
I have enjoyed all of Doug Alderson’s award-winning books, but I was truly blown away by his latest, A Florida Dance: Life Stories from the Sunshine State (Earthways Press 2026). I know Doug through Tallahassee’s writing community and consider him a friend, but the praise I’m offering here is fully earned. These stories are so […]
Ben Guest
February 10, 2026 by Leave a Comment
Ben Guest holds a PhD from the University of Mississippi and an MFA from the University of Southern California. His 2021 memoir, Zen and the Art of Coaching Basketball: Memoir of a Namibian Odyssey, hit #1 on several Amazon categories. He has a weekly newsletter about writing and creativity at benbo.subtsack.com.
“1000 Pieces of Time” by Michael Minassian
February 10, 2026 by Leave a Comment
Literate, imaginative, erudite, precise, and lovely—the poems by Michael Minassian in 1000 Pieces of Time (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions 2025) are all that and more. Minassian blends the here and the gone, the realistic and the fanciful, the dreamy and the sharp, in a collection at once creative and impeccably well crafted. Divided into three distinctive parts, […]
Books of Note: “Finding the Lost Country: The Life of William Gay” by J.M. White and “Francine” by Joe Taylor
February 7, 2026 by Leave a Comment
From the Introduction to Finding the Lost Country: The Life of William Gay “Some folks dwell in the shadow realms of the creative imagination, where synchronicity is as common as day and night, as sunlight and moonglow. William Gay and J.M. White are anomalies. There is no rational explaining of their lives, of their works. The self-educated […]
“Bloodroot: Poems” by Bill King
February 4, 2026 by Leave a Comment
The bloodroot plant with its white flowers that herald spring evokes the deep forests of Appalachia, which are sacred groves for poet Bill King, who grew up in and lived his life in Appalachia. His collection Bloodroot: Poems (Mercer University Press 2023) is a record of this life, one of challenges but sustained joy buoyed by a […]