An heirloom pocket watch loosely links three novellas together in Green Forest, Red Earth, Blue Sea by Jim Gulledge. Each story captures the distinctive beauty of a different North Carolina community—Saluda, Peachland, and Beaufort. The prologue presents a striking image: a hawk, a rabbit, and a rattlesnake, each “oblivious to all hungers but its own,” […]
Donna Meredith interviews Walker Abel, author of “Heart & Bone”
October 28, 2026 by Leave a Comment
Heart & Bone Summary: Deep in the Appalachian winter, a brutal ambush at a remote mountain shelter leaves two young hikers dead. For Emma Fisher and her friend Summer, surviving the attack is only the beginning. Somewhere in the whiteout, a man named Jedediah follows them—a man bound to Emma’s past by something she believed […]
“The Weird Girl” by Carla Damron
October 20, 2026 by Leave a Comment
The Weird Girl (Stillwater River 2025) by Carla Damron continues the story of social worker Georgia Thayer that readers met in The Orchid Tattoo. (See our review here.) In this installment, Georgia is fostering Tessa, a vulnerable teenager she previously rescued from sex traffickers. Given Tessa’s traumatic past, her struggle to fit in at school […]
“Here Where We Stand: The Shawnee Springs Stories” by Ed Davis
October 13, 2026 by Leave a Comment
Magical, mystical, lyrical—Ed Davis’s linked story collection, Here, Where We Stand (Main Street Rag 2026) is all this and more. His poetic descriptions of the village of Shawnee Springs and the Glenora Wood nature preserve may send readers searching for them online, perhaps hoping to visit. Though fictional, they are clearly inspired by Yellow Springs, […]
Changes coming to Southern Literary Review
October 12, 2026 by Leave a Comment
Staff changes; mission remains the same As 2026 transitions to a new year, Southern Literary Review is also experiencing changes. For decades, SLR has prided itself on reviewing emerging authors and covering small presses ignored by major media like the NYT. As local newspapers have cut staff, it has become more difficult for these authors […]
“Rough Cuts” by Glenn R. Miller
October 10, 2026 by Leave a Comment
Glenn R. Miller captures a fascinating and largely forgotten snippet of silent film era history in the novel Rough Cuts (Koehler Books 2026). In the early days of cinema, individual states established censorship boards to review films and determine which scenes had to be removed before exhibition. It is difficult to imagine how studios managed […]