CHRONOS TIME OF POLITICS, KAIROS TIME OF LIFE LIVED:  Gail Godwin on Life, Politics, and Citizenship by Kerstin W. Shands

When the 2024 presidential election was approaching Gail Godwin decided to write a chronicle to record the political development, a chronicle that would also look back at important periods in her own life. Her new book, The Art of Becoming a Citizen: A Memoir (Bloomsbury 2026), raises profound questions about meaning and morality on personal and […]

Read of the Month: “Art Work: On the Creative Life “by Sally Mann

Almost without exception, seeing a book with the subtitle “On the Creative Life” I’d take a pass. But who can resist a book like Sally Mann’s Art Work Art Work: On the Creative Life (New York: Abrams Press, 2025), that begins with “This is a book about how to get shit done” ? Sally Mann, […]

Fascinating Faulkner: Personal essay from Mollie Smith Waters

Storytelling. It is what makes Southerners, well, Southern. While the South has always been able to boast of great yarn spinners, one of the most famous of those writers is William Faulkner. After all, he won a Nobel Prize for Literature, so his genius is not in question. Faulkner was truly brilliant at capturing the […]

The World That I Know: Stephen Corey’s “As My Age Then Was, So I Understood Them: New & Selected Poems, 1981-2020”

Essay by Steven Croft The poet, a “poet,” is a crafter of words, and if very successful, maybe a magician of words.  A philosopher, if wise, gives great thought to fundamental ideas and questions, even if wisdom knows final answers will remain elusive.  Stephen Corey’s volume, As My Age Then Was, So I Understood Them: New […]

“Did Joyce inspire Gone with the Wind?”  Essay by Ivan Visioli PhD

In the seventh chapter “Aeolus” of James Joyce’s Ulysess, we find the words “Gone with the wind. Hosts at Mullaghmast and Tara of the kings.” Obviously, the name “Tara” associated with the words “Gone with the wind” bring to mind the title of Margaret Mitchell’s novel, so much so that the Italian translators, from Giulio […]

Dawn Major reviews “The Best of the Shortest: a Southern Writers Reading Reunion”

Introduction: A year ago, on the weekend before Thanksgiving I travelled from Atlanta to Fairhope with a fellow author and friend, John Williams, to attend the first (and as I’ve been told) the last Southern Writers Reading Reunion. The Best of the Shortest: a Southern Writers Reading Reunion anthology was going to be introduced and […]