Everybody Here is Kin is a literal storm brewing in the middle of a place called Boneyard Island. This is supposed to be Lucille’s birthday trip onward to Key West, and the island a destination to bury her father’s ashes. Instead, her mother takes off with a new man, leaving a note: See you Wednesday…I’ll text or call, adding seventy-five dollars for Lucille to care for herself and the two younger children, Mayzie and Jack. Wednesday comes and goes. Lucille is only thirteen, fourteen on Labor Day, and Naomi disappears for longer than the children can remember her leaving them in the past. Can ..read more

Perpendicular Women: Adventures in the Multiverse (Atmosphere Press 2023) by Chris Coward has a stunning cover design befitting the exceptionally intriguing story inside. Speculative fiction, the novel is divided into three parts, each featuring a different character: “Connection 1: Kara, Dreamer”; “Connection 2: Pandora, Leader”; and “Connection 3: Dawn, Champion.” Each section takes places in a different time. Most chapters begin with a quotation from M.R. Franks, the author of The Universe and Multiple Reality: A Physical Explanation for Manifesting, Magick and Miracles. Kara’s story begins ..read more

Tracy K. Smith Tracy K. Smith had already been awarded a Pulitzer Prize and appointed to a second term as Poet Laureate of the United States when she did a reading at my local library (Arlington, Va.) Although I had read her warm and inviting poetry, I was not prepared for the way she pulled me into a conversation in the few minutes after she signed her book. Her attention was warm and generous in spirit. She gave it without measure. I have noticed that same quality as I watched her do interviews on TV for To Free the Captives (Knopf 2023). The subtitle, A Plea for the American Soul, ca ..read more

Dreama Frisk Dreama Frisk, born and raised on McCann’s Run, WV, won first place in the Northern Virginia Writers poetry contest (2021). She also convened Ice Writers in Romney, WV. Her poetry collection, Ivory Hollyhock is on reserve in Arlington, VA Library Writers Center, cited as “a slice of history and its importance to the understanding of Appalachian culture.” Her first novel, Before We Left the Land, is under final edit. The post Dreama Frisk appeared first on Southern Literary Review ..read more

Valediction: Poems and Prose (Madville Publishing 2023) by Linda Parsons is an achingly lovely collection in which the poet treks through ordinary facets of life weighing marvel against damage. Parsons’ poems and her micro-essays, which she calls visitations, are eminently relatable—the death of a beloved dog, a complicated father-daughter relationship, loving support from older women in her family circle, aging, the pandemic, gardening, travel—and more. Yet, for all these are familiar topics, the work here is consistently fresh. The poems and essays can be admired both for what they say and f ..read more

Scott Gould’s newest collection, Idiot Men, provides the stage for wayward characters who make poor choices in life and love against a backdrop of elegant prose. In “Word of the Day” (winner of the 2020 Larry Brown Short Story Award), a long-haul truck driver’s wife flees to Jamaica with her lover, leaving him to babysit her hairless tomcat, Princess Di. A male nurse discovers a room full of counterfeit NASCAR paraphernalia during a home health visit to a trailer park in “Playing Chicken.” Outside, two men sprinted away in the darkness, their footsteps slapping the pavemen ..read more

Louise and Vincent (Red Adept Publishing LLC 2023) by Diane Byington is a moving, well-written novel which should captivate readers, especially those who like history and stories of strong women. The book blends well-researched history with the author’s rich imagination and her talent to create a story about star-crossed lovers, domestic abuse, and the power of art. Set primarily during the latter days of Vincent van Gogh’s life, the novel starts and ends in New Orleans, but most of the story takes place in France. The very real artist, van Gogh, is fresh out of an asylum when he rents a poor ..read more

Allen Mendenhall’s debut novel, A Glooming Peace This Morning (Livingston Press 2023), is an achingly lovely, stirring novel about confused youth, a tragically mismatched relationship, legal ethics, and small-town Deep South in the 1970s. The story is told in the voice of a mature man looking back forty years to events in his youth, and the philosophical musings in his point of view add a layer of depth to the tale. The narrator, called Cephas after his boyhood nickname, has not entirely made peace with what happened back then, and he may not understand it completely either. Yet Mendenhall, in ..read more

Background: To our complete surprise, when Terresa Haskew queried me about reviewing her novel Winston’s Book of Souls, we discovered we were once neighbors in Tallahassee. What a happy coincidence that we were not only former neighbors, but we both nurtured a lifelong love of books and pursued writing as careers. You can read the review here. DM: Your protagonist sells life insurance. What motivated or inspired you to put this job at the heart of your story? TH: I’m happy you asked! My father, who passed away in 2012, worked in the insurance industry most of his adult life. In the beginning ..read more

Introduction: Allen Mendenhall served as editor and publisher of Southern Literary Review for a decade, and when Associate Editor Claire Hamner Matturro discovered he had written his first novel, A Glooming Peace This Morning, she reached out for an interview. Mendenhall has written eight non-fiction books, including Of Bees and Boys: Lines from a Southern Lawyer and the textbook, Literature and Liberty: Essays in Libertarian Literary Criticism.  In so doing, he has established yourself as an erudite writer of scholarly, thoughtful books. He has also contributed academic articles to ..read more