After serving as Associate Editor and contributing many reviews and author interviews, Dawn Major is stepping down from that leadership role to concentrate on her own writing at year’s end. Thankfully, she will continue to contribute occasional reviews and interviews to SLR. Dawn Major received her MFA in Creative Writing from the Etowah Valley Writing […]
Welcome to new Associate Editor Jennifer Lewis
September 16, 2026 by Leave a Comment
Southern Literary Review welcomes Jennifer Lewis as its newest Associate Editor. Lewis is an English Instructor at Marshall University and an Editorial Assistant for Mountain State Press. As a student, she earned her BA in Theatre and MA in English at Marshall. She’s had her work published in the 2023 and 2024 issues of Et […]
“Waking Up Alone,” poetry by Michael Hettich
September 15, 2026 by Leave a Comment
Tender. Poignant. Evocative. Unflinching. Waking Up Alone (Redhawk Publication, 2026) by multiple award-winning poet Michael Hettich is all that—and more. Heartbreaking and authentic, these are elegiac poems by a poet at the height of his talents writing about the loss of a much-beloved wife after 44 years of marriage. Dedicated to Colleen Ahern-Hettich, there are […]
“The Witch of Sonora” by Johnnie Bernhard
September 14, 2026 by Leave a Comment
Johnnie Bernhard’s latest novel, The Witch of Sonora (Stoney Creek Publishing, 2026), returns readers to the gritty Central Texas landscape introduced in Hannah and Ariela. Hannah, now in her eighties, continues to grapple with the horrors of human trafficking, offering refuge on her isolated ranch to young women who have been victimized. Bernhard frames this […]
“Reckoning with the Past: The Historical Poetry of Frank X Walker” by Kristine Yohe
September 14, 2026 by Leave a Comment
In the introduction to her book, Reckoning with the Past (U of Kentucky 2025), Yohe identifies the five poetry collections by Frank X Walker on which her research is focused. She selected these collections containing historical persona poems as vantage points from which readers can “interrogate a cultural and national past.” She describes persona poems […]