InHemlock Hollow, Culley Holderfield takes readers on a fascinating two-fold journey as he skillfully interweaves the lives of twenty-first-century Caroline McAlister and nineteenth-century Carson Quinn. The story begins with Caroline, a professor of astroarchaeology, finding Carson’s journal in the cabin she is having restored. Her return to this Hemlock Hollow cabin after many years is […]
Read of the Month: “Red Clay Suzie” by Jeffrey Dale Lofton
May 30, 2023 by Leave a Comment
Named as one of the most anticipated LGBTQIA+ books of 2022 by Lambda Lambda Literary and winner of the Seven Hills Literary Prize for Fiction, Red Clay Suzie (Post Hill Press) was absolutely captivating. Calling it a page-turner does not do it justice, though its short chapters, sometimes only a few pages in length, make […]
“Tour of a Lifetime: Glenamaddy to Gomorrah” by Thomas Rabbitt
May 29, 2023 by Leave a Comment
When Thomas Rabbitt’s first acclaimed book of poetry, Exile (1975), won the prestigious Pitt award, he was a relatively young man. At that time, he was charged with starting a Masters of Fine Arts in creative writing program at The University of Alabama, a program he led to national prominence before retiring in 1998. Rabbitt’s […]
“The Boundaries of Their Dwelling” by Blake Sanz
May 17, 2023 by Leave a Comment
The Boundaries of Their Dwelling by Blake Sanz is an assortment of fiction short stories of high literary quality, with impressive details and imagery. The stories take place between Mexico, Florida, Louisiana, and Texas. The author is a master at fleshing out characters and effective in pulling and moving the hearts of his audience with […]
Treasures in the Dirt: Rachel Custer’s “Flatback Sally Country”
May 17, 2023 by Leave a Comment
With the blue-collar grit of Philip Levine, the maternal feminism of Lucille Clifton, and the dexterous formalism of Howard Nemerov, Rachel Custer’s Flatback Sally Country is a hybrid of all things enjoyable in a book of poems. From line one of this collection, “All day the sky is a closed fist,” the poet begins taking […]
A conversation about “Teaching Black History to White People” by Leonard N. Moore
May 17, 2023 by Leave a Comment
Teaching Black History to White People (University of Texas Press, 2021) by Leonard N. Moore is an important book that joins the ranks of Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste, Henry Lewis Gates’s Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow, and James W. Loewen’s Lies My Teacher Told Me in assuring that all […]