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 […]
“Charlie-Man” by Thomas Cullen
May 4, 2026 by 1 Comment
Thomas Cullen’s debut novel Charlie-Man (Brandylane 2025) is a slow-burn of a coming-of-age story—a paced, environmental read that takes us into the world of an elite preparatory boys’ school in Richmond, Virginia, in the mid-1990s. We meet protagonist Charlie Stewart, a rising high school senior, as he is about to jump off a dam into […]
“All is the Telling” by Rosa Castellano
May 4, 2026 by Leave a Comment
All is the Telling (Diode Editions, 4/5/25) is a memoir in poems. That’s what made me want to read and review it. But when I opened the book and began to read I understood why so many memoir instructors and instructions suggest that all writers should read poetry—for the language. The language throughout this book […]
“What Love Can’t Fix: Navigating the Storms of My Husband’s Mental Illness” by Kay L. Harris
May 3, 2026 by Leave a Comment
Tallahassee systems analyst, Kay L. Harris, will move you to tears with her memoir of her husband’s serious mental illness (SMI), What Love Can’t Fix: Navigating the Storms of My Husband’s Mental Illness (2026). Written from the heart of a child raised on Disney dreams in the post-war recovery from the Great Depression, it reveals how life […]
Hilary Vidalakis
April 29, 2026 by Leave a Comment
Hilary Vidalakis is a former journalist, park ranger, and prescribed fire technician who now writes and edits from her home in the Bronx, NY, overlooking the Mahicantuck (Hudson) River. She is mom to two wild girls. Her favorite reads include nature writing, poetry, memoir, and children’s literature.
“The Mango Tree” by Annabelle Towmetich
April 15, 2026 by Leave a Comment
Annabelle Tometich’s delightful sense of humor sweetens even the toughest, most humiliating moments of her life in her outstanding memoir, The Mango Tree (Little, Brown and Company, 2024). Beginning with an epigraph from her mother’s Facebook feed, the book announces its tone immediately: laugh-out-loud funny. “I shook my family tree and a bunch of nuts […]
Dawn Major interviews Emma Ensley, author of “The Computer Room”
April 14, 2026 by Leave a Comment
Emma Ensley’s collection of short stories, The Computer Room, proves that there are still a few out there with a sense of humor. This book is a must read for Millennials and Gen-Z although readers from any generation (yes, Boomers you will relate as well) would appreciate Ensley’s stories. Prepare to be transported back in […]