The Southern Literary Review celebrates southern authors and their contributions to American literature. We feature the classic writers who have defined southern literature, and we highlight emerging authors through interviews, profiles, and book reviews. In an effort to back independent bookstores and to encourage creativity in the publishing world, SLR is an IndieBound supporter.
June Read of the Month: “Buried Seeds,” by Donna Meredith
June 2, 2020 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by Claire Hamner Matturro Women through the ages have had to choose between their own needs and those of their families. In her newest book, Buried Seeds (Wild Women Writers, April 2020), award-winning author Donna Meredith takes this basic conflict further by asking how much two women will risk to take strong stands on […]
“Alcestis in the Underworld,” by Nina Murray
May 27, 2020 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by Joshua S. Fullman Despite the social division, even antagonism, between the various city-states and polities that made up the Greek world, Hellenism nevertheless found a measure of cultural cohesion in their religious narratives. The myth of Alcestis, to cite but one of these narratives, required a poet no less skilled than Euripides to […]
“The Girl with Kaleidoscope Eyes,” by Williams Rawlings
May 20, 2020 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by Donna Meredith The Girl with Kaleidoscope Eyes, by William Rawlings, would be a great read if only because it presents a richly layered mystery and a wronged protagonist deserving of much more than the world has handed him. But the novel is so much more than that. Rawlings took the historic Savannah setting […]
“Falling Apart, Radiant,” by Mary Jane Ryals
May 13, 2020 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by Claire Hamner Matturro In her newest chapbook, Falling Apart, Radiant, Mary Jane Ryals offers us poems of resiliency which resonate with tenderness and intimacy about what it means to live, suffer, get up and do it all again. Ryals invites her readers in for a close look at her fight against cancer, but […]
May Read of the Month: “Fly Fishing in Times Square,” by William Walsh
May 7, 2020 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by Claire Bateman …[C]onsciousness needs the world and other people to develop, but then it can grow and exist on its own; once external relations become internal, the universe exists from within…” Marcello Massimini and Giulo Tononi, Sizing Up Consciousness “What happens when imagination confronts the universe?” Walsh explores this instigating question by revealing […]
Claire Bateman
May 5, 2020 by Leave a Comment
Claire Bateman’s newest poetry collection, Wonders of the Invisible World, is due out this spring from 42 Miles Press. She is the author of eight other poetry books, most recently Scape (New Issues Poetry & Prose.) She has been awarded Individual Artist Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Tennessee Arts Commission, and the Surdna […]
“Meg & Jo,” by Virginia Kantra
April 30, 2020 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by Tamatha Cain Virginia Kantra’s latest novel, Meg & Jo, plays on the beloved story of the March sisters of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, imagining the sisters as millennials navigating through both the internal and external pressures of modern womanhood. Kantra is New York Times best-selling author of 30 novels and winner of […]
Tamatha Cain
April 28, 2020 by Leave a Comment
Tamatha Cain is a writer in Jacksonville, Florida, currently editing her first novel. After attending college on vocal and creative writing scholarships, she founded and ran several successful businesses, was the lead vocalist in a wedding band, and she may have sung at your niece’s bat mitvah. She is also an award-winning sugar artist whose […]