Reviewed by Cameron Williams When Palmer Cray is found guilty of vehicular manslaughter, he’s sentenced to fifteen years in Sweetwater State Correctional Facility. On his eighteenth birthday, his first day in the joint, Palmer is issued his “Sweetwater Blues,” the denim shirt and trousers that will be his uniform for the extent of his incarceration. […]
July Read of the Month: “Suite for Three Voices,” by Derek Furr
July 3, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by Cameron Williams In “Starting from Error,” the prelude to Suite for Three Voices (a piece also nominated for the Pushcart Prize), Derek Furr muses, “What if there were an ‘h’ in ‘went,’ as there so often was in my students’ writing? When is involved in went, time rolled up in the past tense, […]
Remembering Harry Crews
June 29, 2012 by Leave a Comment
On March 28, 2012, the South lost one of its most remarkable, most creative, greatest, crudest, weirdest writers: Harry Crews. He would have celebrated his 77th birthday on June 7. Crews was born and raised in a rural, economically underdeveloped part of Bacon County, Georgia. He was perhaps best known for writing about […]
May Read of the Month: “Slant of Light,” by Steve Wiegenstein
May 28, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Review by Cameron Williams The concept of utopia—an ideal community composed of men and women living together in social and political harmony—has been a popular trope in literature since Plato first penned The Republic. Slant of Light (Blank Slate Press), Steve Wiegenstein’s first novel, breathes new life into this genre, (re)imagining the possibility of utopia […]
Profile: Donna Tartt
January 10, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Profile by Cameron Elizabeth Williams By the age of thirteen, Donna Tartt had already begun to establish herself as an emerging literary talent. Born in Greenwood, Mississippi, in 1963 and raised in nearby Grenada, Tartt spent her childhood enjoying the company of her great-aunts, great-grandparents, and grandparents. Tartt was especially fond of—and likewise adored by—her […]