Reviewed by Claire Hamner Matturro Feral, North Carolina, 1965 (Southern Fried Karma, 2019) is a powerful gem. Told with wit and verve, the novel unfolds in vignettes that read like short stories, and in fact, many chapters were previously published as short stories. Feral captures a time and place with impeccable world building, astute observations, […]
The North Carolina Writers’ Network 2019 Fall Conference
August 27, 2019 by Leave a Comment
Enjoy Mountains of Literary Riches at NCWN’s Fall Conference ASHEVILLE—The North Carolina Writers’ Network calls this “The Writingest State”—all of it, Manteo to Murphy, Calabash to Crumpler. We find and welcome writers from all parts of North Carolina, with no city or region holding a monopoly on literary talent or output. But we have to […]
Allen Mendenhall Interviews Kimmery Martin, Author of “The Queen of Hearts”
March 28, 2019 by Leave a Comment
AM: Thanks for the interview, Kimmery. You’re a medical doctor by training, correct? What kind of practice? And how did you manage to find the time to pen this novel, which, given its plot that involves medical school and residency, as well as its hospital settings, could only have been written, I think, by someone […]
Richard Rankin
January 31, 2018 by Leave a Comment
Richard Rankin has been the Anderson Davis Warlick Head of School at Gaston Day School for the last 17 years. He is the author of several books, including While There Were Still Wild Birds: A Personal History of Southern Quail Hunting, which is forthcoming in May 2018 with Mercer University Press. He holds a Ph.D. in history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He and his wife, Sarah […]
Allen Mendenhall Interviews Lorna Hollifield, Author of “Tobacco Sun”
August 14, 2017 by Leave a Comment
AM: Thanks, Lorna, for doing this interview. The title of your debut novel is Tobacco Sun. I want to ask you about that title, but first I want to quote from some opening lines of the book. “Tobacco,” you say, “a strangely fragile, yet willful crop, desperate for survivorship, proved it could somehow adapt to […]
August Read of the Month: “Hopscotch,” by Steve Cushman
August 10, 2017 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by Claire Matturro Someone draws a hopscotch board on a sidewalk by a hospital in Greensboro, North Carolina. The hospital CEO with a Grinch persona orders it cleared off and a recently released felon, John Deaver, glad for his job as a janitor, erases it. But the chalk hopscotch board reappears on the sidewalk—again […]