CHM: Thank you both for taking this time to discuss your wonderful new poetry anthology, Let Me Say This, A Dolly Parton Poetry Anthology (Madville Publishing 2023). The anthology contains poetry written by fifty-four contributors, including emerging and established poets. The jacket blurb notes in part that “These poems remind us to be better and […]
“Let Me Say This: A Dolly Parton Poetry Anthology” edited by Julie E. Bloemeke and Dustin Brookshire
March 14, 2023 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by Claire Hamner Matturro Let Me Say This: A Dolly Parton Poetry Anthology (Madville Publishing, 2023) is a complete delight. It is filled with poems which are alternately bold, splashy, wise, personal, revealing, poignant, funny, thoughtful and thought-provoking, utterly charming, or more—just like the iconic cultural figure the anthology pays homage to in verse. […]
“Night Letter: A Novel” by Sterling Watson
February 15, 2023 by Leave a Comment
With Night Letter (2023), Florida author Sterling Watson proves once more that he is a master storyteller and an exemplary writer. Set in the Sixties in the Florida Panhandle, the novel’s focus is on its sole narrator, an eighteen-year-old youth just released from six years in a Nebraska reform school. This narrator, Travis Hollister, tells […]
“Scapegoat” by T. K. Lee
January 30, 2023 by Leave a Comment
There’s something wonderfully fresh and energetic in T. K. Lee’s innovative second poetry collection, Scapegoat (2022). Intricately layered, these poems are like looking through a kaleidoscope so that with each new viewing, something different and intriguing emerges from the words, images, and structures. These poems vibrate with words that dance about on the visual page […]
January Read of the Month: “Jar of Pennies” by John Yearwood
January 4, 2023 by Leave a Comment
John Yearwood’s Jar of Pennies (John & Stephenie Yearwood Management Trust, 2022) is an impeccably written cultural and historical crime fiction novel. The author knows how to spin a tale, capture a character, set a scene, portray a community, and write in stellar prose. However, as established in its opening chapter, it is not a […]
Claire Hamner Matturro interviews author John Yearwood
January 2, 2023 by Leave a Comment
CHM: Thank you, John Yearwood, for giving Southern Literary Review a bit of your time and attention with these questions. First, let me congratulate you on writing such a powerful book. Jar of Pennies is an excellent novel, categorized as “cultural heritage fiction” and “historical murder mystery thriller.” Though primarily, perhaps, the story of a […]