Reviewed by Philip K. Jason Like its predecessor Liar’s Bench, GodPretty in the Tobacco Field is a powerful coming-of-age story complicated by lingering racial prejudice. The town of Nameless, Kentucky is a place where everyone suffers under the heel of grinding poverty, poor education, and images of a ruthless, punishing God from whom family elders […]
“The Marble Orchard,” by Alex Taylor
March 16, 2016 by 1 Comment
Reviewed by Jordan Murphy The Marble Orchard is author Alex Taylor’s first novel and second major work, alongside his 2010 collection of short stories, The Name of the Nearest River. The Marble Orchard tells the tale of Beam, a young Kentucky boy of nineteen who finds himself wrapped up in a tangle of family history […]
“Lay it on my Heart,” by Angela Pneuman
November 21, 2014 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by Emily Hoover Like thick, humid air on a late-summer afternoon in the Deep South, Angela Pneuman’s debut novel, Lay it on my Heart, is heavy. It exists as a commentary on faith, mental illness, and womanhood that’s appropriately served chilled, like glasses of sweet tea I remember from childhood. Darkly humorous and painfully […]
“Ghosting” by Kirby Gann
April 20, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Review by Tina Egnoski In Kirby Gann’s new book, Ghosting, Kentucky is raw-edged, poverty-stricken and violent. It is also a place of physical beauty and, for some, of personal redemption. The protagonist James Cole Prather, known as Cole, is twenty-three and at loose ends. He lives with his mother Lyda, an addict. His half-brother Fleece […]
University of Louisville Italo Calvino Prize
October 12, 2010 by Leave a Comment
University of Louisville Italo Calvino Prize in Fabulist Fiction A prize of $1,500, publication in Salt Hill Journal, and an all-expenses-paid trip to read at the University of Louisville’s annual Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture is given annually for a work of fabulist fiction written in the vein of Italo Calvino. Submit up […]