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 […]
“Yellow” by Amy Pence
July 11, 2026 by Leave a Comment
Yellow (Red Hen Press 2026) is a multi-threaded transformation of the novel into an innovative form. Twelve-year-old Z learns about the world through the televised events of 1973 while the nation is taken by the Watergate hearings and Skylab’s launch into space. That summer she discovers an unclassified slime mold in her backyard which she […]
“Summer State of Mind” by Kristy Woodson Harvey
July 1, 2026 by 1 Comment
In her newest novel, Summer State of Mind, Kristy Woodson Harvey does it yet again—she brings us into a story that we don’t want to leave. But before I go any further, I want to know something. Could this possibly be the beginning, or continuation, of a series? Please, say yes! I am so not […]
Read of the Month: “Massawa” by Pam Webber
July 1, 2026 by Leave a Comment
In a gripping World War II thriller based on true events, Massawa: A Tale of Espionage, Love and Illusion (She Writes Press 2026) by Pam Webber will keep readers turning pages to discover what happens next to a young American spy. Fans of The Alice Network, The Rose Code, A Woman of No Importance, The […]
“In Another Country” by Andrea Jurjevic
June 30, 2026 by Leave a Comment
It’s easy to forget the opening line of “Nastic Movements,” the first poem of In Another Country by Andrea Jurjevic, is “Sweetness, back home.” The sweet in this case is more the elusive, fatal beauty of the familiar than any saccharine indulgence. In “Nastic Movements,” fatal threats are always near “like a snake around a […]
“The Geography of Desire: A Memoir of West Africa” by Linda Gambill
June 30, 2026 by Leave a Comment
“The geography of desire is different for everyone. Desire propels us forward but never lets us know where we will land,” Linda Gambill writes in The Geography of Desire: A Memoir of West Africa. In a clear-eyed, philosophical narrative, she chronicles her challenge as a Peace Corps volunteer in The Gambia, West Africa. There she […]
“Whispers of Ink and Starlight” by Garett Curbow
June 29, 2026 by Leave a Comment
“Somewhere between the ages of twelve and twenty-one, he lost the superpower to make mundane things magical,” writes Garrett Curbow about protagonist James Finch, in Curbow’s debut novel Whispers of Ink and Starlight (Lake Union 2026) . This fantastical book aims at re-enlivening that magical capacity—for James, and for the reader. James is a student […]