This novella is ninety pages of sheer delight, a well-told story with a tender twist. While Visiting Babette (Sagging Meniscus Press 2025) uses the technique of the unreliable narrator to spin a charming, endlessly clever, and at least slightly bizarre tale of two cousins, Ina and Babette. These two are more like close sisters, each […]
Jess Burtis
June 15, 2025 by Leave a Comment
Jess Burtis is an avid reader and Southern Gothic enthusiast. She is a graduate of Trinity College Dublin with an M.Phil in Literature, and she received her B.A. from Appalachian State University. Born and raised in the Carolinas, Jess is a fan of Southern writers, particularly Flannery O’Connor and Zora Neale Hurston. When Jess isn’t […]
June Read of the Month: “NOLA Face: A Latina’s Life in the Big Easy” by Brooke Champagne
June 4, 2025 by Leave a Comment
Part of the story behind Brooke Champagne’s astonishingly good essay collection, NOLA Face: A Latina’s Life in the Big Easy (UGa Press 2024) is a dog. Well, not just Nola herself, the “brindled, emaciated pit-boxer” that Champagne and her husband adopted after Hurricane Katrina, but moreso her particular expression, born of jealousy and/or inadequacy, when […]
“Song of Sourwood Mountain” by Ann H. Gabhart
June 2, 2025 by Leave a Comment
Ann Gabhart’s latest novel, Song of Sourwood Mountain (Revell Press 2024), explores the meaning of family and community. With its focus on a slow-developing romance, and overt evangelical religious values, the novel reads like a historical Christian romance in the tradition of Grace Livingston Hill. The Song of Sourwood Mountain tells the story of Mira […]
Anna Schachner
June 2, 2025 by Leave a Comment
Anna Schachner is the author of the novel You and I and Someone Else and the forthcoming short story/flash collection The Lovely Woods Are Yours. She’s been a music journalist, jewelry designer/creator, college professor, and lit journal editor but is now a freelance writer/editor and book coach in Atlanta. She is at work on a […]
Dawn Major interviews Andrew Diaz Winkelmann, author of “The Guava Tree”
June 1, 2025 by 1 Comment
In January of 2024, I attended an author showcase hosted by A Novel Idea (ANI). ANI is an incredible organization for the Atlanta writing community connecting both emerging and established authors with readers. I had heard Andrew Diaz Winkelmann’s name circulating amongst other author friends, but I didn’t know anything about his debut novel, The […]