In the dusky shadows of 1980’s North Carolina, Andrew K. Clark conjures a novel both haunted and alive in Where Dark Things Rise (Quill & Crow Press, 2025. Two generations past the events of his earlier work, Where Dark Things Grow (Independently Published, August 2024), the world here is darker and more restless, peopled by […]
Rhonda Browning White
January 11, 2026 by Leave a Comment
Rhonda Browning White gleefully resides in Hickory, NC. Her first novel, Filling the Big Empty, was published in November 2024 by Redhawk Publications. She is editor of The Appalachian Grit Lit Anthology featuring some of our region’s best authors, forthcoming with Redhawk Publications in December 2025. Rhonda received the 2019 Press 53 Award for Short […]
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; […]
Focus on Resource Extraction with “Beyond Buffalo” and “Filling the Big Empty”
March 6, 2025 by Leave a Comment
This month Southern Literary Review is focusing on the damage resource extraction causes to the environment and to people and the communities they live in. Two fine environmental novels share the honor of March Book of the Month. The first is Beyond Buffalo by Betsy Reeder. It shines a light on the psychological damage following […]
“Filling the Big Empty” by Rhonda Browning White
March 6, 2025 by Leave a Comment
It’s easy to understand why Rhonda Browning White’s debut novel, Filling the Big Empty (Redhawk Publications 2024) was shortlisted for the 2022 Neilson Prize. The novel is a tour-de-force, relentlessly examining environmental issues in Appalachia. While never losing focus on a young couple’s relationship, the story drops readers into the horrors of mountaintop removal to extract coal, the […]