Keith Donnelly follows Three Deuces Down with two sequel mysteries, including his latest, Three Devils Dancing
“It started with the book title and a very small premise of a missing person.” So author Keith Donnelly told a crowd at Elizabethton Book Club about the first of his Donald Youngblood mysteries, a book called Three Deuces Down, published in 2008 by NewSouth Books. Not three years later, he’s just published his third in the series. He debuted Three Devils Dancing with a program last month in Gatlinburg, Tennessee for Friends in Need, a church-based community outreach program …
Senator Lister Hill subject of memoir published 50 years later
Recent articles in The Gadsden Times and The Montgomery Advertiser praised the new memoir A Senator’s Wife Remembers: From the Great Depression to the Great Society, noting its importance for Alabama political history. The book has an unusual gestation, being a memoir composed of a manuscripts and letters written by the wife of the late Senator Lister Hill and compiled and edited by her daughter, who discovered the materials in a box in the attic of the Hills’ Eufaula home …
Ted Dunagan received warmly by 1,000 schoolchildren on south Alabama tour
Young adult author Ted Dunagan recently concluded an exhilarating two weeks of presentations at schools and libraries in south Alabama, speaking to over 1,000 youngsters about his award-winning book, A Yellow Watermelon, and its newly published sequel, Secret of the Satilfa. An appearance at the Georgia Literary Festival in Statesboro concluded his trip …
Kathryn Tucker Windham’s tales haunt festival and stage this October
Legendary storyteller and author Kathryn Tucker Windham is much in the news this October as the town of Thomasville, Alabama prepares for the 7th Annual Kathryn Tucker Windham Ghost Walk on October 23 and Birmingham’s Red Mountain Theatre Company debuts 13 Alabama Ghosts and Jeffrey: A Haunting New Musical on October 29. Mrs. Windham’s Jeffrey’s Favorite 13 Ghost Stories, an anthology of Mrs. Windham’s very favorite tales published by NewSouth Books, will be making lots of Halloween appearances in connection with these activities …
Lewis Grizzard’s Hometown Reunion remembers writer and his books
The sound of the Buckeye Band filtered through the air this past weekend in Moreland, Georgia, as friends and fans gathered to remember Lewis Grizzard at the first Lewis Grizzard’s Hometown Reunion festival. As covered by the Newnan Times-Herald, the weekend ended with a “Toast to Lewis Grizzard,” featuring remembrances of Grizzard by colleagues and relatives, including Grizzard’s widow Dedra. During the weekend, Dedra also signed copies of Grizzard’s They Tore Out My Heart and Stomped That Sucker Flat, newly re-released by NewSouth Books …
Huffington Post’s Peter Dreier pays homage to Guy Carawan
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 …
Mississippi Public Broadcasting gets personal with Rheta Grimsley Johnson: two terrific interviews
In back-to-back interviews for Karen Brown and Gene Edwards at Mississippi Public Broadcasting, syndicated newspaper columnist Rheta Grimsley Johnson reflects on her life, her work, and her books, including her newest, a memoir called Enchanted Evening Barbie and the Second Coming. In her interview for Brown on Mississippi Edition, Rheta relates with characteristic candor and humor the story underlying the book’s title: growing up Southern Baptist …
Maya Angelou, Shirley Sherrod support Zellner’s Wrong Side of Murder Creek movie project
Dr. Maya Angelou expressed her support for the new movie Son of the South — based on Bob Zellner’s memoir The Wrong Side of Murder Creek: A White Southerner in the Freedom Movement — with a fundraising party at her home October 3. In attendance were Zellner, Son of the South director Barry Alexander Brown, and a host of civil rights figures including former US Department of Agriculture staffer Shirley Sherrod …
Lewis Grizzard remembered on DawgDial, in Hometown Reunion festival
The Bulldog Nation enjoyed a touch of humor amidst their tough opening season when Dedra Grizzard, wife of the late Southern humorist Lewis Grizzard, spoke with the DawgDial radio call-in show. Considering the University of Georgia’s current 1-4 record before the upcoming game against Tennessee, Dedra offered that her husband “certainly would have had a lot to write about” …
NewSouth Novelists Do Care about Hurricane Katrina
Even as the The New Republic claims in their September 10, 2010 article that “the literary response to Hurricane Katrina has been almost nonexistent,” NewSouth begs to differ. While writer Chloe Schama believes that “no major literary figure has illustrated the effects of the hurricane,” NewSouth proudly points to Tony Dunbar’s Tubby Meets Katrina, published in the wake of the storm …