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Author Faye Gibbons attends First Lady of Alabama’s Scholastic book giveaway; Gibbons’s next YA novel due out shortly

As a part of the #FirstLady500 Scholastic book giveaway, Dianne Bentley, Alabama’s First Lady, presented 100 Scholastic books to Holtville Elementary School on May 15, 2014. Mrs. Bentley chose to read one of her favorite children’s books, Night in the Barn, written by her favorite Alabama children’s author Faye Gibbons, to the students assembled. Gibbons, whose new YA novel Halley arrives next month, was in attendance …

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July 4, 2014 No Comments

Anniston, Alabama’s pitfalls, triumphs, told in books

A new book by University of Alabama professor Ellen Spears, Baptized in PCBs: Race, Pollution, and Justice in an All-American Town, tackles environmental issues in Anniston, Alabama, citing NewSouth’s Beyond the Burning Bus by J. Phillips Noble, about the attacks on Freedom Riders in Anniston, and making powerful linkages between Anniston’s civil rights history and the polychlorinated biphenyls environmental crisis …

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July 1, 2014 No Comments

Tavis Smiley Show hosts Clifton Taulbert to discuss memoir, The Invitation

Radio host and commentator Tavis Smiley interviewed Clifton Taulbert, bestselling author of titles including the award-winning Once Upon a Time When We Were Colored, in early June in connection with Taulbert’s new memoir, The Invitation. In a smart and engaging interview that you’ll wish lasted longer than its nine minutes, Smiley draws Taulbert into candid discussion about his transformative experience in South Carolina as chronicled in The Invitation. The book recounts Taulbert’s invitation to dinner at a former plantation house …

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June 24, 2014 No Comments

NewSouth Books Remembers Virginia Pounds Brown

On May 26, 2014, NewSouth Books lost a longtime friend and beloved author, Virginia Pounds Brown. Although we will miss her in our books family, we will always remember her as a woman who was lively and engaged into her nineties and a very fine writer. Brown was a Birmingham native, a writer as well as a publisher and a bookstore owner, and a well known and respected authority on Native American, especially Creek Indian, history …

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June 20, 2014 No Comments

Huffington Post spotlights poet David Rigsbee in Video Reading Series

In a recent article in the Huffington Post, Anis Shivani cited poet David Rigsbee (The Red Tower) as one of eight emerging poets and fiction writers who represent “the cutting-edge of today’s literary world.” As part of the “Video Reading Series,” Rigsbee and his fellow writers are featured in videos reading selections from their works and are also given the opportunity to present a behind-the-scenes look at their writing. Each writer presents a short elucidation on their own work, explaining the writing process as well as the roots and vision of their pieces …

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June 11, 2014 No Comments

Announcing South, America, Rod Davis’s latest New Orleans noir mystery

In award-winning author and journalist Rod Davis’s newest novel, South, America, he returns to the Big Easy and introduces a dynamic new leading man, Jack Prine. South, America opens as Prine discovers a murder victim and finds himself drawn into a web of violence threatening the victim’s beautiful sister. They begin a dangerous, desperate flight through Alabama, the Delta, and back to New Orleans searching and evading button men, goons, and racial violence. Deadly ties extend to the Dixie Mafia, priceless stolen art, and debased Southern aristocracy. In a a final, startling showdown in the Arts District, no one’s survival is guaranteed …

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June 4, 2014 No Comments

Oklahoma raves over Clifton Taulbert’s The Invitation

In his new book The Invitation, best-selling author and inspirational speaker Clifton Taulbert describes the transformative experience he had in accepting a professional invitation to supper in Allendale, South Carolina. Accompanied by haunting childhood memories of segregation in the form of “Little Cliff,” Taulbert courageously faces the feelings that have come to the surface (and the table) in this captivating memoir that returns to the themes of his award-winning book Once Upon a Time When We Were Colored. A feast of reviews and interviews in Taulbert’s current hometown of Tulsa, Oklahoma, has been set in preparation for the book’s debut as well.

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May 22, 2014 No Comments

Junior Ray Says: Memphis Gets a Royal Flush

Junior Ray, the irrepressible narrator of John Pritchard’s Junior Ray novels, sent these thoughts about the royal princes’ recent visit to Memphis, Tennessee. “At first, because it was Meffis, I thought it had to be the bobbakew. Otherwise I couldn’t see no other reason for anybody to come to Meffis, TENNessee, all the way from England. Plus I seen the picture in the National Informer of them two boys, whose grandmama is the queena-England, high-steppin it into the Rendezvous Restaurant to get some ribs. But if it wuddn Meffis bobbakew that brung em, I figured the only other reason for em to come here woulda been to pay a visit to the Magic Pussy Cabaret & Club, only they was too late for that, cause the law closed it down. And I am sorry they missed it …”

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May 6, 2014 No Comments