Meet the Editors

Donna Meredith is publisher and editor-in-chief. Claire Hamner Matturro, Dawn Major, and Mary Ellen Thompson serve as associate editors. RIGHT: Photographs by VanessaK Photography, LLC.

Effigies and Incantations at Johns Creek Books July 26, 2025

Associate Editor, Dawn Major, will be appearing for the launch of the anthology, Effigies and Incantations, put out by D.C. Phillips on July 26th at John’s Creek in Georgia. Come meet her diabolical doll, Lil’ Softee, as well as other Southern authors ranging from traditional hauntings to the Southern Gothic.

2025 Pulitzer Prize in History–“Combee: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom During the Civil War” by Edda Fields-Black

Congratulations to Edda Fields-Black, who won the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for history with her book Combee: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom During the Civil War. Read Geri Lipshultz’s excellent review of this work. The Gibbes Museum of Art, a beacon for the arts in the American South since its establishment in […]

Mary Ellen Thompson interviews Margaret Seidler, author of “ ‘Payne-Ful’ Business: Charleston’s Journey To Truth”

Introduction: I met Margaret Seidler at USCB in January at the opening reception for her book, “Payne-Ful” Business Charleston’s Journey To Truth. Her narrative is combined with artwork based on the advertisements for the sale of enslaved people, painted by John W. Jones. After Margaret spoke, I went right up to her and said “I’m […]

“‘Payne-Ful’ Business: Charleston’s Journey to Truth” by Margaret Seidler

Margaret Seidler’s book, “Payne-Ful” Business: Charleston’s Journey To Truth, is going to be known in the future as a pivotal point in changing history. Margaret has not written “another” book about slavery, it is not a memoir where she feels sorry for her circumstances, it is a wake-up call to embrace the kind of knowledge […]

“Going to Maine: All the Ways to Fall on the Appalachian Trail” by Sally Chaffin Brooks

The author, Sally Chaffin Brooks, is also a comedian, and this shows in a positive way in her memoir about hiking the Appalachian Trail when she is only twenty-five. Going to Maine: All the Ways to Fall on the Appalachian Trail (Running Wild Press 2024) is, thus, to be expected humorous and it is in a […]

“Witchcraft for Wayward Girls” by Grady Hendrix

Reviewed by Jess Burtis  At a maternity home in rural Florida, a teenage girl finds herself abandoned by her family and far from her life in Alabama. Fern is pregnant. It’s a transgression shared by the other young, unmarried girls at the Home for Unwed Mothers. There, in the sweltering summer of 1970, Neva learns […]