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.

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 […]

Monroeville Literary Festival Feb. 27-March 1, 2025

Where: Monroeville, AL When: February 27 – March 1, 2025 Winners: Cassandra King and Suzanne Hudson! See Monroeville Literary Festival here. 

Submission guidelines for Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel Contemporary Appalachian Literature

Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel Contemporary Appalachian Literature submission guidelines. Their editors are excited about the Volume 28 theme–and hope it inspires your creative interpretations through poetry, short prose, and visual (2D) art.  In this PDF, you’ll  also find instructions related to book reviews, “new books” notifications, and resolution quality of images.

“Penalties of June” by John Brandon

Penalties of June (McSweeney’s 2024) by John Brandon is a well-crafted, invitingly atmospheric tale of a motley group of anti-heroes and a lovely, hard-working young woman in 1998 Florida. These characters cross fortunes and fates as their lives interlace again—and again—in a tale that carries a hint of the Southern Gothic within its absorbing pages. Kirkus […]

“Gothictown” by Emily Carpenter

Most times in life when things seem too good to be true, they are. Such is the case in Emily Carpenter’s latest novel, Gothictown (Kensington, 2025). If you liked Shirley Jackson’s short story “The Lottery,” you are bound to enjoy the mysteries hidden behind the innocent façade of Gothictown. Carpenter begins the novel with brief […]