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.

Julie E. Bloemeke

Julie E. Bloemeke (she/her) is the 2021 Georgia Author of the Year Finalist for Poetry for her debut full-length collection Slide to Unlock (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2020), which was also chosen as a 2021 Book All Georgians Should Read.  Co-editor with Dustin Brookshire for the forthcoming Dolly Parton poetry anthology (Madville Publishing, 2023), she is also an associate editor […]

Welcome!

The Southern Literary Review celebrates Southern authors and their contributions to American literature. We feature classic writers who have defined Southern literature, and we highlight emerging authors with interviews, profiles, and book reviews. We support independent bookstores. If you subscribe to our newsletter, please add southernliteraryreview@comcast.net to your email contacts list so that the newsletter doesn’t […]

“Wish Me Joy, West Virginia” by Valerie Banfield

Those who enjoyed Catherine Marshall’s Christy will enjoy the way faith is incorporated into Valerie Banfield’s Wish Me Joy, West Virginia. Those who enjoyed Kim Michele Richardson’s The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek and Donna Everhart’s The Saints of Swallow Hill will like way Banfield delivers the historical aspects of a small town. And anyone […]

Claire Hamner Matturro interviews H. H. Leonards, author of “Rosa Parks Beyond the Bus: Life, Lessons, and Leadership”

Rosa Parks (1913-2005) was a Southern Black woman born into the Jim Crow South who became an icon of the civil rights movement after her refusal to give up her bus seat in Montgomery, Alabama. Author and friend, H. H. Leonards, writes that with that “one simple act, Mrs. Rosa Parks changed the trajectory of […]

Allen Mendenhall Interviews Susan Cushman, Author of “Pilgrim Interrupted”

Allen Mendenhall Interviews Heath Dollar, Author of “Old Country Fiddle”