Reviewed by Tina Mozelle Braziel and James Braziel Walt Whitman contains multitudes, and so does Salaam Green’s debut collection The Other Revival: Poems & Reckonings (Pulley Press 2025). A certified listening poet, Green put her vast skills to work at the Wallace House in Harpersville, AL as a poet-in-residence, interviewing descendants of the enslaved and […]
Ben Guest interviews Steve Suitts, author of “What’s In a Family Name: A Southern Family History Becomes a Gothic Mystery”
February 11, 2026 by Leave a Comment
SUMMARY: Steve Suitts was seventy-two years old when he tracked down his grandfather’s birth certificate and discovered his grandfather had died eighteen months before his father was born. What follows, in his new memoir, What’s In A Family Name: A Southern Family History Becomes a Gothic Mystery, is a detective story as Suitts traces his […]
“The Athlete Whisperer: An Improbable Voice in Sports” by Andrea Kirby
February 1, 2026 by Leave a Comment
To be truly captivating, a personal memoir needs to have at least these three things: an interesting baseline story, meaningful insight, and a strong voice conveyed well in quality writing. In all those ways, Andrea Kirby’s new memoir, The Athlete Whisperer: An Improbable Voice in Sports (FriesenPress 2025), excels. The baseline story tells readers how […]
“Great and Small” by Josh Dugat
January 11, 2026 by Leave a Comment
In this rich, rewarding collection, Josh Dugat pays tribute to the varied matters of the world—subjects both seemingly simple yet expansive, intimate yet universal. As reflected in its title, the many poems in Great and Small: Poems (Able Muse Press 2025) luminously ring with celebration and observation of a myriad of things. Dugat casts his […]
Read of the Month: “Leta Pearl’s Love Biscuits” by Arlon Jay Staggs
December 31, 2025 by Leave a Comment
First, you’re entranced by the title: Leta Pearl’s Love Biscuits (Koehler Books 2025). Then, buckle up. You’re about to enter three-hundred mischievous pages of 1982 small-town Alabama in this wildly entertaining romp by Arlon Jay Staggs. The protagonist, Trudy Abernathy, is a young woman with a past that continues to haunt her, largely because of […]
“Junie” by Erin Crosby Eckstine
October 14, 2025 by Leave a Comment
Junie (Ballantine 2025) by Erin Crosby Eckstine is a vividly drawn work of historical fiction, set in the antebellum South, which features a complex, fully realized 16-year-old enslaved teen named Junie. While the title character is the heart and soul of the novel, other characters—good, bad, and hovering in between—fill the pages in this haunting, […]