Dr. Ethel Hall, the first African American woman elected to the Alabama State Board of Education, died this month at age 83. Hall had recounted both her two decades on the Board of Education and her early struggle to achieve higher education in her memoir My Journey, published earlier this year by NewSouth Books …
After years spent published by New York houses, the distinctly Southern flavor of humorist Lewis Grizzard’s books has come home to the South. In the article “NewSouth Reissues Southern Humorist’s Oeuvre,” Publishers Weekly‘s Marc Schultz spotlights the unique connection between Grizzard and NewSouth, which has joined with the Grizzard estate to bring all the writer’s books back to print. “I spent a lot of time looking for publishers,” Grizzard’s widow Dedra told Publishers Weekly. “They either did not get Lewis, his works, or Southern heritage and traditions, or they were too small to market it, or they wanted to hold the rights.” After she spoke with NewSouth, Dedra said, “I literally felt at home. I had found what I was looking for: they published good books with a dedicated staff committed to excellence” …
With the news that John Pritchard’s novels Junior Ray and The Yazoo Blues were now available as ebooks, Pritchard hurried to tell his eponymous character, Junior Ray Loveblood. The results were as unpredictable as Junior Ray himself … “On Kindle?” Junior Ray asked. “Correct,” I said. “Da-um!” he said. “They gon’ set em on fire?!!” Before I could respond, he took off like Miss Ruth McGrew, back in 1952, when she found a three-foot water moccasin coiled up in her mother’s yellow Buttercup-Spode serving platter in the kitchen cabinet above the sink: “I knew it!” he shouted. “Bygod I knew it! I knew sure as shootn that sooner or later them Baptists — and all the rest of them Bible-Bangers was gon’ get around to burnin up my books!” …
From the Alabama Review: Anyone researching a nineteenth-century Alabama topic that touches Montgomery must consult Matthew Blue. Before the appearance of Mary Ann Neeley’s edition of Blue’s works, this was difficult because copies were rare and fragile. Neeley’s edited and annotated volume of Blue’s works should be in major research libraries in the nation and included in most of Alabama’s public and academic collections. Collectors of Alabamiana will welcome this volume …
We’re only growing more and more excited for the premiere of Deadline, the new movie starring Steve Talley and Eric Roberts, and based on Mark Ethridge’s thrilling novel Grievances, in theaters in 2012. And now, the official Deadline trailer has finally arrived! …
Former Alabama Supreme Court chief justice and US Senator Howell Thomas Heflin will be inducted into the Alabama Men’s Hall of Fame on Tuesday, September 20, 2011, and a plaque will be inscribed with his name in the Samford University library. Heflin died in 2005. In 2001, NewSouth Books published his authorized biography, A Judge in the Senate, by John Hayman with Clara Ruth Hayman. Senator Edward Kennedy called A Judge in the Senate “required reading for all citizens who believe that one person can make a difference” …
As teachers across the country prepare to return two classic works to their classrooms with the help of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn: The NewSouth Edition, book editor Alan Gribben has released a series of online videos and podcasts intended to guide educators in presenting these books. The six videos available on YouTube are “Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn as Companion Works,” “Three Criticisms Leveled at Huck Finn” …
Valerie Gribben’s recent New York Times op-ed, “Practicing Medicine Can Be Grimm Work,” has received lovely responses from across the country. In their Letters section, under the heading “When ‘ER’ Met ‘Hansel and Gretel,” the New York Times has published some of those responses. Gribben is a medical student and the author of The Fairytale Trilogy …
One NewSouth author remembered another this past month. Syndicated newspaper columnist Rheta Grimsley Johnson called her former Auburn University English professor Charles Rose “vibrant and true” in her weekly column; Rose died June 6, 2011 at the age of 80. Johnson, the Pulitzer Prize-nominated columnist and author of Enchanted Evening Barbie and the Second Coming: A Memoir, took Rose’s creative writing course at Auburn in the 1970s …
Colleagues of Kathryn Tucker Windham, who died this past weekend at the age of 93, remember her as a writer, storyteller, and mentor. Windham’s hometown paper, The Selma Times-Journal, interviewed NewSouth editor Randall Williams, who’s edited Windham’s writing for almost twenty years …