The early praise for American Founders by Christina Proenza-Coles was, quite simply, outstanding. The book, which released from NewSouth Books in April, was blurbed by
Bob Zellner, civil and human rights organizer and NewSouth Books author of The Wrong Side of Murder Creek, offers a personal reflection on the passing of literary great Harper Lee, who died on February 19; she was 89: “A great Alabamian has died. When I first read Harper Lee’s novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, I could tell the author was a Southerner by her description of the cordite smell of green pecan hulls and the indelible green stain they leave when crushed by young bare feet …”
On February 7, 2016, Andrew Glaze, Alabama’s eleventh poet laureate, died peacefully in his sleep in his home in Birmingham, Alabama. He was 95 years old. He was an American master, who wrote with astonishing vigor and clarity for more than 60 years. In 2012, Alabama Governor Robert Bentley commissioned Glaze as the state’s eleventh Poet Laureate at a ceremony at the State Capitol in Montgomery …
An essay by bestselling author Dorothy Allison, which serves as a foreword to Crooked Letter i, has won the attention of the Huffington Post. The essay frames a smart and moving anthology of LGBT stories about coming out in the South, edited by Connie Griffin and newly published by NewSouth Books. In recalling the days before “this new wondrous age with Supreme Court decisions affirming gay and lesbian marriage,” Allison reminds us of the courage it took to self-identify as LGBT …
Mazel tov to Matzo Frogs by Sally Rosenthal with illustrations by David Sheldon. It made the “best Jewish children’s books of 2014” list published by Tablet Magazine. Marjorie Ingall calls Matzo Frogs a “livelier, goofier, amphibian tour-de-force,” adding, “The book teaches kids the expression mitzvah goreret mitzvah — one good deed leads to another. The nutty frogs are bold and vibrant, outlined in black ink, against blurry backgrounds, so they really jump” …
Valerie Gribben, author of a popular work of young adult fiction called Fairytale, published by NewSouth Books when Gribben was just 16 (and newly expanded into the Fairytale Trilogy), shows a mature side of her storytelling skills in an op-ed piece that appears in today’s Wall Street Journal …
Dr. Alan Gribben, Mark Twain scholar and editor of the highly publicized NewSouth Edition of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn and of five other editions of these works — all recently published by NewSouth Books — has been named editor of The Mark Twain Journal. The journal is devoted primarily to the life and works of Mark Twain and his circle of family, friends, and acquaintances, drawing especially on contemporary sources …
A new edition of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, forthcoming from NewSouth Books in mid-February, does more than unite the companion boy books in one volume, as the author had intended. It does more even than restore a passage from the Huckleberry Finn manuscript that first appeared in Twain’s Life on the Mississippi and which was subsequently cut from the work upon publication …
Ralph Hammond, a former two-term mayor of Arab, Alabama, who served as chief of staff, press secretary and speech writer for former Gov. Jim “Big Jim” Folsom, died this past Friday; he was 94. At NewSouth Books, he is chiefly remembered as Alabama’s eighth poet laureate. A sampling of his verse was included in a gem of a book we published showcasing the work of Alabama’s poet laureates, called These I Would Keep. It was compiled by Alabama’s ninth poet laureate, Helen Blackshear, sadly, now also deceased …
In a nicely observed piece about the life and work of Guy Carawan, Peter Dreier of The Huffington Post shares that Carawan will be honored at a “Singing for Justice” celebration on October 23 at the home of Jan Goodman and Jerry Manpearl in Santa Monica, California; tickets may be purchased for $35 …