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.

Betsy Reeder

Betsy Reeder is a retired biologist and college educator, as well as a doting grandma. She is the author of a historical fiction trilogy set in the New River region of West Virginia: Madam’s Creek, Broomstraw Ridge, and Salt in Boiling Water. She is also the author of the Civil-war-era novel Tupper’s Coins and the […]

An evening with Dawn Major and Kim Poovey

Thursday, March 20, 2025 – 5:00-6:30 PM EDT Price: Free Registration: Seating is limited; please call to reserve your spot: 843-379-7025. Venue: Pat Conroy Literary Center | 601 Bladen St., Beaufort Website for details

Monroeville Literary Festival: Cassandra King named 2025 Harper Lee Award Recipent

Read of the Month: “Prodigal” by Phyllis Gobbell

Fireworks, fireflies, and gunfire light up Phyllis Gobbell’s exquisite, poignant novel Prodigal (Histria Fiction 2024). This modern retelling of the prodigal son is, above all, a story of love and forgiveness in a Southern family. A Baptist preacher’s son, nineteen-year-old Connor Burdette flees from his hometown of Montpier, Tennessee, after a boy he is with […]

Books of Note: “Can’t Shake the Dust”; “Faulkner, Welty, Wright”; and “Before We Left the Land”

Can’t Shake the Dust Can’t Shake the Dust (Regal House Publishing 2024) by C.H. Hooks employs three points of view to paint a full picture of a dysfunctional family in South Georgia. The alcoholic father and son are obsessed with racing—even though the father lost a leg in a racetrack accident. The recovering addict mother […]

Southern Literary Review Editor Donna Meredith interviews Phyllis Gobbell, author of “Prodigal”

Novel Summary It’s the Fourth of July, 2000. In a small Southern town, fireworks light the sky above the City Park, while down the street a smaller flash of light changes everything for 19-year-old Connor Burdette. He has just lost the girl he loves. Now, buying beer at the Back Home Market, he becomes an […]