Authors 'Round the South

In which her ladyship sits in the snow in her slippers, okra is unexpectedly in season, a very important diary is discovered, Mindy Friddle attempts to write on an electric typewriter—with scant success, the Pulpwood Queen takes down her Christmas tree while her dog swells up, valid complaints are made against a book jacket, somebody has their brain tickled, an orange squirrel gets bonked on the head, and the devil is revealed to be a beautiful man.

Arts Calendar | STARS |Gossip |Okra | The Blogs | Read This! | Found in Lady Banks' Commonplace Book | On her ladyship's bookshelf

Dearest Readers,

It is, perhaps, a little odd to be thinking of okra when not a week hence her ladyship, the editor’s garden and yard were laid under some four or five inches of snow. But her ladyship is a northerner by birth and thus used to dreaming of summer in the midst of winter, and envisioning green and growing things in a landscape of bare tree branches and dry brown grass.

Here in the Carolinas snowfalls such as this one are more rare than hurricanes (much, much more rare), and more fleeting. So her ladyship, upon the morning it occurred, simply donned her fuzzy slippers and bath robe, brushed the snow away from her front porch stoop, and sat down with her cup of coffee in the quiet early morning to enjoy the site Snow makes the world seem especially quiet.

She also pondered okra. As well as beans, peas, peppers, sunflowers, zinnias, summer squash and moonflowers, because she has been planning her spring garden. But especially okra, which according to the booksellers of the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance is always in season. They have just announced their current selection of Winter/Spring “Okra Picks” –books that ripen over the next several months that they find especially tasty.

Her ladyship, the editor

Authors 'Round the South

Authors Round the South is the home of one of the most extensive listings of literary events in the South, including author readings & appearances, book club meetings, book & literary festivals, open mics, poetry slams and writing groups. No matter what part of the South you live in, you can find a bookstore and author appearance near you!

Ten years of great southern lit for $9.95!

How well do you know your Southern lit? We dare you to use a pen on these crossword puzzles, each inspired by one of the winning titles of the SIBA Book Award, honoring ten years of the very best in Southern literature as chosen by the people who would know...Southern Independent Booksellers! A great gift for your book club, for puzzle-lovers, and anyone who loves Southern literature.

$9.95 paperback. Available at Southern Indie Bookstores.

Play a sample puzzle online!

Reader, meet writer: STARS authors on the road

The following authors are traveling this month and open to meeting with book clubs, talking to schools and participating in library programs. Visit the STARS directory at Authors Round the South for more information.

Literary Gossip & News

Oh, what her ladyship wouldn’t have given to be standing beside Professor Sally Wolf King when she discovered a plantation diary that may hold the secret to many of William Faulkner’s novels. More information here.

And let us give the lie to the phrase “dumb jock,” for at least one of the New Orleans Hornets players has been reading  Cormac McCarthy, Jhumpa Lahiri and Junot Diaz.

storySouth is currently accepting nominations for its million writers award, the deadline is the end of February.

"Good Ol' Girls" opened in New York City this Valentine’s Day to enthusiastic reviews, which surprises her ladyship not one whit. The show, after all, is based upon the stories of Lee Smith and Jill McCorkle, so it would take a concerted effort to make them come out badly.

There is a lovely discussion of STARS author and Lady Banks interviewer Karen Zacharias' new book, Will Jesus Buy Me a Double-wide?” on Alabama Live (al.com). Karen takes on notion of  the 'prosperity gospel,' in which prayer is used to ask for riches.

Mr. Ernest Gains believes that writing is like a train trip: “It’s like getting on a train that’s in San Francisco and I’m going to New York. It’s going to take me about three or four days. I know some of the things that’re going to happen on that train trip, but I cannot possibly imagine all of the things that are going to happen in those four days…”

And apparently, Southern Appalachian writers and writing is “what’s hot” in the publishing world. They are just discovering this?

Poets and Writers magazine features Oxford Mississippi’s Square Books this month.

Winter/Spring 2010 Okra Picks

Fiction

Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives by Brad Watson
W.W. Norton, March 2010
9780393057119 $23.95

An Unfinished Score by Elise Blackwell
Unbridled Books, April 2010
9781936071661, $24.95

Burning Bright: Stories by Ron Rash
Ecco, March 2010
9780061804113 $22.99

Fireworks Over Toccoa by Jeffrey Stepakoff
St. Martin’s Press, April 2010
9780312581589, $22.99

Hold Up the Sky by Patricia Sprinkle
New American Library,  March 2010
9780451229144, $15.00

How Clarissa Burden Learned to Fly by Connie May Fowler
Grand Central Publishing,  April 2010
9780446540681, $23.99

Saving CeeCee Honeycutt by Beth Hoffman
Pamela Dorman Books/Viking, January 2010
9780670021390, $25.95

This is Just Exactly Like You by Drew Perry
Viking,  April 2010
9780670021543, $25.95

Nonfiction

Confessions of a Rebel Debutante by Anna Fields
Harpercollins, April 2010
9780399156311, $24.95

Enchanted Evening Barbie and the Second Coming by Rheta Grimsley Johnson
New South Books, April 2010
9781588382504, $24.95

Gullah Cuisine: By Land and Sea by Charlotte Jenkins and William Baldwin
Evening Post Publishing Company with Joggling Board Press,  March 2010
9780981873596, $36.95

I Love You, Now Hush by Melinda Rainey Thompson and Morgan Murphy
John F. Blair, February 2010
9780895873781, $16.95

Lincoln on Trial by Burrus M. Carnahan
University of Kentucky Press, February 2010
9780813125695, $30.00

From the Blogs

The Authors

A Wing and a Prayer: Authors River Jordan and Shellie Rushing Tomlinson were challenged by a mutual fan to join forces and take their respective radio selves on the road to interview book sellers, book clubs, readers and yes – even each other - as they create shows focused on great storytelling. The challenge has been accepted and The Southern Wing & A Prayer Tour will be arriving in the nearabout’s of your hometown spring 2010.

Book lovers will not want to miss out on the storytelling fun run as River and Shellie’s charge across seven states reading from Saints In Limbo and Suck Your Stomach In and Put Some Color On, interview each other with surprise questions and comments at every stop, talk to book clubs about their favorite new reads, and query those great unsung hero’s – the booksellers themselves about just how they found themselves supporting thousands of writers and millions of written words every year, all of which will be featured in upcoming radio programs.

The Southern Wing & a Prayer Tour will include –
• Daily giveaways to tour trackers
• Live Interviews
• Podcast uploads
• YouTube daily postings
• Twitter/Facebook tracking and postings

A Good Blog is Hard to Find : Mindy Friddle--I'm diverging from the assigned topic this month. I don't worry about snobbery much anymore. There's too much to DO to worry about people's skewed perceptions! This is a picture of my grandmother's 1940-something Smith Corona manual typewriter. It is in pristine condition, as is the owner's manual. Alas, the ribbon is not. No ribbons anymore to buy and replace it. The typewriter, itself, can fetch a princely sum on Ebay. So, for Christmas she got an electric typewriter. Yeah, I know. I didn't think they made electric typewriters either. But they do.  I spent the afternoon trying to figure the #$@! thing out...so my grandmother could type her recipes and lists and sympathy notes. When you get 85, you write a lot of Sorry for Your Loss messages. . . keep reading!

Baby Got Books: Living in the South I do get tired of the endemic racial issues here.  However, I understand is the long, deep-seated history that cannot and must not be forgotten.  So, while current race relations exhaust me, the history behind it all fascinates me.  I have so many questions:  “What was it really  like?”  ”Did both blacks and whites truly accept the status quo willingly?”  “Was anyone fighting behind the scenes?”  ”Who?”  What would it have been like to be on the freedom rides?” and finally “What would I have done? Really? Would I have accepted it? or tried to make a change?”  I will admit that I may be more interested because my husband is Black (no, not African American) and I am not.  I want our daughter to have a clear understanding of her family’s past and her heritage. Although The Help by Kathryn Stockett is fiction, I don’t doubt that the stories told by the main characters definitely happened at least once if not a hundred times.  Keep reading!

The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature: “The Big House” Much of my childhood was spent hunting for the bobcat 'Ole Three Toes' who lived on the farm, fishing for the grandaddy bass 'Ole Split Lip' who lived under the stump in the creek, playing shortstop, playing saxophone in a jazz band and being bored with school. . . keep reading.

The Pulpwood Queen: This year's tree at my house was thrown up haphazard and never really decorated or photographing it for that matter. I did put on some lights and red ribbon but I never got around to decorating it. Then I never got around to taking it down, until today, the day after Valentine's Day.
You see today began as any typical day for me. I got up at around 4, made coffee, did wash, did dishes, ran my daughter to school, saw Jay off to work, then ran my Jack Russell dog, Snickie, to Jay's uncle the vet sobbing the whole way thinking I was going to have to put the dog down. When I got to the vet, Bruce and the vet tech's, Mona and Julie thought perhaps the dog was more likely having an allergic reaction to something. You see he was all puffed up, at first I thought our dog wasn't our dog. He stood in the driveway and I blinked hard. He looked like our dog on steroids. Kind of a Arnold Swarzenegger dog. . . keep reading

Fried Chicken and Coffee: Appalachian Working-Class Fiction General Characteristics of Working-Class Writing and Art; not designed to be criterion but characteristics. 1) The writing is based on lived experience and shows characters as human persons in a lived space, depicting their daily life including their actual physical work. Keep reading!

The Booksellers

A Reading Life: What we are to books, what books are to us—what they offer to us and what we take from them—is the theme that runs through David Bajo’s seductive and sometimes puzzling novel The 351 Books of Irma Arcuri. The 351 books of the title are hand-bound hardcovers that Irma, a writer and book conservationist, has bequeathed to her long-time friend and sometime lover, a mathematician named Philip Mazyrk. The first Philip hears about the inheritance is in an email from Irma’s mother. Irma, apparently, is gone. Not dead. Just gone. Disappeared from life. “Can one do that? Leave her own life? How does one do that?” asks Philip’s most recent ex-wife, who knew and liked this woman who drifted in and out of Philip’s life like an errant comet on an unpredictable orbit. “She left me her books, B.” answers Philip. It’s as final a statement as either of them can imagine her making. . . keep reading

Book Witches Blog (Spellbound Children’s Bookshop): For the past few days I’ve been participating in a discussion (via email) with several colleagues in the children’s bookselling world about how exactly certain marketing decisions are made at publishing houses. In particular, what is the decision process behind designing covers? The discussion was sparked by this announcement from Bloomsbury earlier in the week: “Bloomsbury is ceasing to supply copies of the US edition of Magic Under Glass. The jacket design has caused offense and we apologize for our mistake.  Copies of the book with a new jacket design will be available shortly.” In what way, you may ask, is this cover offensive? Well, it features an image of the book’s heroine as a white girl with brown hair, when she is described in the book as having brown skin and black hair. . . keep reading!

Update: Publisher is changing cover.

Consuming Books: The 13th Hour is a thriller told in reverse, reminiscent of the 2000 film Memento.  This is Richard Doetsch’s third novel after The Thieves of Heaven and The Thieves of Faith.  As a test of his writing skill, Doetsch wrote the story in 30 days.  New Line Cinema has won the film rights to the story. The story centers around Nick Quinn, a man accused of murdering his wife.  A mysterious stranger visits him in the police interrogation room and offers him a way to go back in time to prevent Julia’s murder.  Nick begins to realize that his actions in the past may have unexpected consequences in the future.

Page 854: On Plagarism and “originality”: . . . it isn't plagiarism if you acknowledge your source. But Hegemann didn't acknowledge her "authentic" borrowings until she was confronted with the evidence. Personally, I agree with Lee Ellis' conclusion as posted on The Book Bench: "Cutting and pasting shouldn't be considered writing. And though 'mixing' has a nice ring to it -- what about blending? Or melding? -- it doesn't hide the dirty reality that someone is getting robbed." Keep reading!

Pomegranate Books: On “brain-tickling” reads – Spooner Every now and then I'll pick up a book that reads so comfortably because the writing is so close to my regular thinking patterns. Maybe not the individual words.  (Spooner does have some language that could be considered offensive.)  More like the cadence, pacing, timing or wit.  Pete Dexter, the author, has a DRY sense of humor.  His writing reminds me of my jangled up, tangential stream of conscious thoughts, and the way one of my ex-boyfriends talks. I wouldn't want to spend my life with Pete Dexter, but I'm enjoying stepping into his world for a bit. Not unlike reading my ex's Facebook posts, after being out of touch for several years.  I knew there was a reason we got along so well. Here are some of my favorite zingers from the book so far: "As far as recreation went, that was about it for old Fuzz.  One attempted murder."  (Spooner's family dog) Keep reading!

Read This!
recommended reading from your neighborhood southern booksellers

[via IndieBound.org]

I Want to Be Left Behind Finding Rapture Here on Earth, by Brenda Peterson
(Da Capo, $25, 9780306818042)
“Peterson’s latest book is the story of her unique upbringing, both in nature (her father was with the Forest Service) and in the Southern Baptist religion. At once precocious and thoughtful, she weaves her way through the contradictions of growing up to find her own spiritual place in the world. ‘Glowing’ would not be too strong of an adjective for this book!”—Ann Carlson, Harborwalk Books, Georgetown,SC

Acorns Everywhere! by Kevin Sherry
(Dial Books for Young Readers, $16.99, 9780803732568)
"Excitement begins the moment orange squirrel gets bonked on the head by an acorn and then compulsively gathers, digs, and buries all the acorns in sight. But will he remember where they're buried? We'll find out at lunchtime!" --Ellen Klein, Hooray for Books!, Alexandria, VA

Still Alice: A Novel by Lisa Genova
(Pocket, $15, 9781439102817; Pocket, $7.99, 9781439170045, due December 29)
"Still Alice tells the story of a 50-year-old Harvard psychology and linguistics professor in the year following diagnosis of early onset Alzheimer's disease. Her struggles with the effect on her work life, and her family's attempts to cope, are compelling and entirely believable. Genova's doctorate in neuroscience lets information flow naturally as part of a tender story, perfect for book groups." --Carla Jimenez, Inkwood Books, Tampa, FL

The Scent of Sake: A Novel by Joyce Lebra
(Avon, $13.99, 9780061662379)
"In 19th-century Japan, women were not even allowed into the family owned brewery business, as they were considered bad luck and contaminated. This is the amazing story of Rie, the daughter struggling to gain and retain control of the house of Omura dynasty. Joyce Lebra fills her novel with one-of-a-kind characters and a one-of-a-kind story. I loved it!" --Lillian Kinsey, Bohannons' Books With a Past, Georgetown, KY

The Secret Scripture: A Novel by Sebastian Barry
(Penguin, $15, 9780143115694)
"This is a haunting story of memory and how seemingly small decisions can have large consequences. As 100-year-old Roseanne, a patient in a mental institution, tries to reconstruct her life, she realizes that memory is not always reliable, and that truth may not be attainable. In addition to offering readers characters with grace and writing that is mesmerizing, The Secret Scripture invites discussions about what 'truth' is and how cultural circumstances and individual choices define a life." --Rona Brinlee, The Book Mark, Atlantic Beach, FL

Lush Life: A Novel by Richard Price
(Picador, $15, 9780312428228)
"Like a modern, urban Crime and Punishment, this brilliant book is an intimate study of the interior lives of everyone touched by a too-quick trigger finger. You will be haunted by Price's riveting portraits of the self-pitying initial suspect, the lonely young perp, the disillusioned detective, and the victim's family, as well as the New York City neighborhood they share." --Carla Jimenez, Inkwood Books, Tampa, FL

Serena: A Novel by Ron Rash
(Ecco, $14.99, 9780061470844)
"Macbeth moves to the Depression-era Great Smoky Mountains in the finest novel yet by Ron Rash. Ambitious newlywed timber moguls George and Serena Pemberton ravage the mountain landscape while savaging their competitors and fiercely resisting allies of the budding conservation movement. Filled with Shakespearean levels of deception, cruelty, and retribution (mountain-style), Serena speaks to current times with its portrait of modern business greed colliding with a very old land and its inhabitants." --John Grooms, Park Road Books, Charlotte, NC

Unaccustomed Earth: Stories by Jhumpa Lahiri
(Vintage, $15, 9780307278258)
"This new collection by Pulitzer Prize-winning Jhumpa Lahiri presents eight short stories centered on Bengali families who have immigrated to the U.S. These quiet but powerful stories, detailing the lives of families perhaps very different from our own, teach universal truths." --Sarah Goddin, Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh, NC

Lady Banks’ Commonplace Book

“My wife died. . .She was sick for four years. Last year, she was in the hospital over 300 days—302 out of 365. She kept saying she didn’t want to go to a nursing home.” He looked at the wedding band on his finger, and rubbed it with his right thumb, as if to polish it.  “I took those vows, for better or worse, in sickness and health, and I’ve kept them. I’ve walked that fiery path.” He looked back at me. “I had no idea it could get so rough. I never did put her in a nursing home. I stuck by those vows, but it was hard. Each and every day was hard. . . . Nine days ago she passed on to glory,” he continued. “It was a beautiful funeral. My daughter set it up, and it was just like my wife would’a wanted it. And then, three days later, I was in this very bed in this emergency room, having a mini-stroke. That’s when I saw a vision of the devil on that wall right there.” He pointed towards the opposite wall, his bony wrist sticking out past his pajama sleeve. “It was plain as day. And he’s a beautiful man. He’s an archangel. The Bible tells you he’s a beautiful man, and it’s right. He just glows.”

--Paul Austin, Something for the Pain: One Doctor’s Account of Life and Death in the ER (W.W. Norton, 2008)

Lady Banks’ Bookshelf