In celebration of National Poetry Month and in anticipation of the 2012 Alabama Book Festival, a 24-hour poetry marathon will be held April 19 & 20 in downtown Montgomery. Any interested poet may participate by reading her/his own work or that of another poet, or both…
On March 1, the University of Alabama’s journalism department presented NewSouth writer Frye Gaillard with the Clarence Cason Award. Gaillard is the third NewSouth author in a row to win the prize, following Rheta Grimsley Johnson and Clyde Bolton. The award honors nonfiction that contributes to a greater understanding of the South …
NewSouth Books is pleased to have been involved with the Alabama Folklife Association‘s annual journal Tributaries from the beginning. Named after the waterways that divide the state’s regions from the Coastal Plain to the Tennessee Valley, Tributaries is also a symbolic title. As Jim Carnes said in the premiere issue, “The state’s cultural landscape, like its physical one, features a network of ‘tributaries’ rather than a single dominant mainstream.” Tributaries‘s thirteenth issue will be released later this month …
Writer Margaret Eby remembers the late Alabama folklorist Kathryn Tucker Windham and pays tribute to Southern ghost stories in her new Paris Review essay “Southern Gothic.” The essay coincides with the posthumous release of Windham’s final book, She: The Old Woman Who Took Over My Life. From the Paris Review: “Windham’s voice is unforgettable. In high school, I would listen to All Things Considered every couple weeks to hear … her rolling, sticky Southwest Alabama accent … ‘I don’t care whether you believe in ghosts,’ Windham was fond of saying. ‘The good ghost stories do not require that you believe in ghosts’ …
On August 31, Dot Moore spoke at the Coweta County Courthouse about her latest book No Remorse: The Rise and Fall of John Wallace. Historian and author Daniel Langford states that Moore’s “gripping” work “answers a thousand questions about the Turner/Wallace case.” According to the Times-Herald, Moore held audiences “spellbound” as she described perhaps the most famous murder in Coweta County history …
In 2011, Poetry Council of North Carolina received more entries than ever for the Oscar Arnold Young Award. David Rigsbee’s collection The Red Tower: New and Selected Poems won “outstanding book of poems published by a North Carolina poet in 2010” …
An essay by NewSouth Books author Valerie Gribben, “Practicing Medicine Can Be Grimm Work,” appears in today’s New York Times Op-Ed pages. Gribben, a medical student at the University of Alabama, Birmingham, is the author of The Fairytale Trilogy, a collection of three of her young adult fantasy novels, including one she published with NewSouth when she was only sixteen years old. In her essay, Gribben remarks on how her fascination with fairytales has informed her understanding of her patients as a medical student …
The civil rights history of the Freedom Rides has been well documented in a number of fine and award-winning volumes. But until now there has not been a short history on the subject. The Freedom Rides and Alabama by Noelle Matteson, newly published by NewSouth Books, is a much-needed account: a concise guidebook which describes key people, places, and events and which provides historical context for the rides …
The talented poet and editor who gave NewSouth Books Working the Dirt, its highly praised anthology of Southern verse, admits she didn’t always have her hands in Southern soil. Authors’ site Red Room recently featured her blog entry …
In what NewSouth would call a different kind of poetic justice, we were delighted to learn that a poem by David Rigsbee from the newly published The Red Tower was featured on Verse Daily this past Sunday (December 5). The poem called “Equinox” observes, “It is the Equinox, and today I feel / the thrall that reconciles the animal / and the hole, cloud and lake, the sexes.” Verse Daily selects a single poem a day for featuring on its website in an effort to promote poets and poetry on the internet ..