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 […]
“The Witch of Sonora” by Johnnie Bernhard
September 14, 2026 by Leave a Comment
Johnnie Bernhard’s latest novel, The Witch of Sonora (Stoney Creek Publishing, 2026), returns readers to the gritty Central Texas landscape introduced in Hannah and Ariela. Hannah, now in her eighties, continues to grapple with the horrors of human trafficking, offering refuge on her isolated ranch to young women who have been victimized. Bernhard frames this […]
“Reckoning with the Past: The Historical Poetry of Frank X Walker” by Kristine Yohe
September 14, 2026 by Leave a Comment
In the introduction to her book, Reckoning with the Past (U of Kentucky 2025), Yohe identifies the five poetry collections by Frank X Walker on which her research is focused. She selected these collections containing historical persona poems as vantage points from which readers can “interrogate a cultural and national past.” She describes persona poems […]
Donna Meredith interviews Bruce Ballister, author of “Next of Kin” and “Traffick”
September 14, 2026 by Leave a Comment
Summary: Human trafficking for the sex trade is the issue at the heart of the first two Jason Saylor action-packed mysteries. In the first book, which was recently reissued as Next of Kin, Jason returns to his hometown on the northern coast of Florida. He’s been involuntarily furloughed from a successful career in investigative journalism, a […]
“Southern Women, Southern Landscapes: Cultural Reflections on the Garden, 1870–1970” by Judith W. Page and Elise L. Smith
September 9, 2026 by Leave a Comment
A fascinating blend of art, literature, and history, Southern Women, Southern Landscapes: Cultural Reflections on the Garden, 1870-1970 (University of Mississippi Press, 2026) by Judith W. Page and Elise L. Smith offers a richly researched and original exploration of the intersection between gardening and creative expression. The authors’ extensive scholarship, combined with the book’s thoughtful […]
“No Way Out But Through” by Susan Beckham Zurenda
September 9, 2026 by Leave a Comment
Susan Beckham Zurenda’s No Way Out But Through tells the harrowing story of Grace, a fifteen-year-old girl forced to marry the older man who raped her. The book is a fictional portrayal but inspired by true experience. Remarkably, child marriage remains legal for those under eighteen in thirty-three states (with parental or judicial permission), and four […]
“Perceptions of Justice: Law, Literature, and Film” by Terry Lewis
September 9, 2026 by Leave a Comment
Terry Lewis’s excellent first venture into a nonfiction book, Perceptions of Justice: Law, Literature, and Film (2026), demands reader involvement. The former judge employs a Socratic method, posing questions that encourage readers to examine their own perceptions of justice and to formulate a personal philosophy of belief. Drawing not only on his courtroom experience, but […]