The editors of Southern Literary Review select several books each year to receive special recognition. (See criteria here.) Congratulations to the authors of these fine additions to Southern literature! Book of the Year – (Tie) The Bright Years by Sarah Damoff The Miniaturist’s Assistant by Katherine Scott Crawford Poetry Lullaby for […]
The Short List for 2025 Books of the Year
December 3, 2025 by Leave a Comment
Books of the Year will be announced Dec. 18 The editors of Southern Literary Review select several books each year to receive special recognition. It recognizes books published over the previous two years (with October of the current year as the cut-off date for consideration.) Categories are Book of the Year, recognizing a novel or nonfiction full-length work; […]
Read of the Month: “The Summer We Ate Off the China” by Devin Jacobsen
October 1, 2025 by Leave a Comment
Introduction: When Devin Jacobsen, author of the novel, Breath Like the Wind at Dawn, reached out to me in the of Fall 2024 requesting a review of his short story collection, The Summer We Ate Off the China, it was the year-end— never a good time—so I read a sample of his work and added […]
July Read of the Month: “Breath Like the Wind at Dawn,” by Devin Jacobsen
July 7, 2021 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by Charley Hively Devin Jacobsen’s debut novel, Breath Like the Wind at Dawn (Sagging Meniscus Press, 2020), opens with a garbled mixture of jarring Western lingo and syntax, graphic violence, and sexual innuendo, but one important detail slowly emerges: gold. Quinn and Irv, a pair of outlaw twin brothers, ambush and slaughter a group […]