ASW: Good afternoon, Minton. It is great to jaw with you this afternoon about your southern roots and how you fuse songwriting with southern myth, reality, and spirit. In your latest music CD, and music video, “Gold Digger,” you paint a portrait of a woman in search of a sugar daddy, which is metaphorical of […]
Allen Mendenhall Interviews Russell Scott, Author of The Hard Times
November 27, 2015 by 1 Comment
AM: Thank you for the interview and congratulations on the publication of The Hard Times. This novel opens in Mississippi with an alarming scene involving a doctor—or doctors—and then brings us to Africa. You’re a doctor in Mississippi who’s traveled to Africa. What’s going on here? RS: I guess you write what you know; it […]
Allen Mendenhall Interviews Elizabeth Harris, Author of “Mayhem”
November 5, 2015 by 1 Comment
AM: I appreciate your taking the time to do this interview. Your writing has been called “literary fiction.” Your prose is beautiful and complex, allusive and fluid. The first pages of Mayhem call attention to “a crime whose mention makes men cross their legs,” locate readers in early 20th century Texas, and reference Herodotus and […]
The Primary Lessons that Created a Writer: Ann Cefola Interviews Sarah Bracey White
October 7, 2015 by 2 Comments
When the Jim Crow South welcomed Sarah Bracey White with a hard slap, the plucky if bewildered young girl found her power in books and, later, in writing. Here’s an interview with the memoirist whose Primary Lessons (Cavan-Kerry Press, 2013), in its fourth printing, is helping heal the wounds of segregation in a small — […]
Allen Mendenhall Interviews Lindsay Parnell, Author of Dogwood
August 13, 2015 by 1 Comment
AM: Thanks for taking the time to talk to Southern Literary Review about your novel, Dogwood. This is a remarkable and poignant book, literary fiction at its finest. You toy with stream-of-consciousness and alternating narration in the book. Why? LP: The articulation of Harper’s journey and the journey itself are irreversibility fused together. Harper’s story […]