SLR Interviews Susan Cushman

 

Allen Mendenhall Interviews Judge William Alsup, Author of “Won Over”

AM:  Judge Alsup, I’m grateful that you’ve shared your time to do this interview for Southern Literary Review.  The occasion for the interview is, of course, the publication of your memoir, Won Over, which has this subtitle: “Reflections of a Federal Judge on His Journey from Jim Crow Mississippi.”  What made you decide to write […]

Allen Mendenhall Interviews Russell Scott, Author of The Hard Times

AM: Thank you for the interview and congratulations on the publication of The Hard Times. This novel opens in Mississippi with an alarming scene involving a doctor—or doctors—and then brings us to Africa. You’re a doctor in Mississippi who’s traveled to Africa. What’s going on here? RS: I guess you write what you know; it […]

“From Midnight to Guntown,” by John Hailman

Reviewed by Daniel Sundahl If I remember right there’s a commemorative statue of William Faulkner on the Oxford, Mississippi, City Hall front lawn. He’s seated on a park bench; there’s a patrician elegance to the statue, legs crossed, pipe in hand, a battered (what was likely brown) hat. What’s missing is a glass of “branch […]

“Retarded Girl Raised in Dog Pen,” by Lauren Leigh

Reviewed by Amy Susan Wilson Disabilities, a family murder, Mississippi, a mental institution, and the spirit of redemption all appear in Lauren Leigh’s debut novel, Retarded Girl Raised in Dog Pen. Every chapter, while often bearing brutal abuse in the household of a rural Mississippi family, rings like a bell, clear and resonant with no […]

Allen Mendenhall Interviews Richelle Putnam, Author of The Inspiring Life of Eudora Welty

AM: Thank you for talking to us about your latest book, The Inspiring Life of Eudora Welty. If my memory is correct, this is the first interview that Southern Literary Review has done about a work in the young-adult (or, as they say, YA) category. I’d like to start by asking about your decision to […]