Dan Pollitt, professor emeritus at the University of North Carolina Law School and contributor to two volumes of political essays published by NewSouth Books, Where We Stand: Voices of Southern Dissent and American Crisis, Southern Solutions, died earlier this month; he was 88 …
Publishers Weekly calls Rheta Grimsley Johnson’s new memoir Enchanted Evening Barbie and the Second Coming a “notable story of [a] devoted journalist,” and indeed the Birmingham News‘s Kathy Kemp notes that “to many young, Southern female journalists making their way in the 1980s, Rheta Grimsley Johnson was our hero and role model, not to mention the best writer we’d ever read.” This praise comes as part of a bevy of well-deserved positive reviews for Rheta’s new book …
NewSouth author Gerald Duff recently traveled to Columbia, South Carolina to discuss his collection of short stories Fire Ants and Other Stories at the fourteenth annual South Carolina Book Festival. Held at the Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center on February 27-28, Duff was one of many authors participating in the festival, appearing on two panels and participating in a “Brunch with the Authors” event …
Harold Grinspoon, the dynamic charitable force behind the PJ Library, was profiled in a recent piece by the Boston Globe. The foundation headed by Grinspoon has given away two million free books to Jewish families over the last four years, in an effort to help strengthen Jewish values and an understanding of Jewish culture, especially among those who are the product of mixed marriages or who live outside urban areas with large Jewish populations. The article observes that Mr. Grinspoon had little formal Jewish education and came to realize the importance of Jewish-themed literature later in life …
Participants in the Big Read at Thomasville Library celebrated with an old-fashioned party featuring games, a visit with “Tom” and topped off with a cake reproducing the cover designed for the special Alabama edition of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer published by NewSouth Books …
Ted Dunagan is no stranger to fan mail. But the students of Gatewood School surprised the author of A Yellow Watermelon, winner of the 2009 Georgia Author of the Year in the young adult category, with not five or ten but a whopping 70 letters of thanks for the presentation he recently gave at the school …
Orville and Wilbur would have approved, no doubt, of the technology that permitted Samford University professor Julie Williams, author of Wings of Opportunity: The Wright Brothers in Montgomery, Alabama 1910, recently published by NewSouth Books, to visit remotely with students at Shiloh Point Elementary School. In a video conference with the school’s fifth graders, set up by Horizons Program Teacher Elizabeth Stevens on February 4, it was almost as if Williams was present in Cumming, Georgia, that day …
NewSouth author and award-winning journalist Rheta Grimsley Johnson has been named the winner of the 2010 Clarence Cason Award in Nonfiction Writing. Established in 1997 to honor exemplary non-fiction writing over a long career, the Cason Award is given annually by the University of Alabama’s journalism department within the Alabama College of Communication and Information Sciences. Johnson will receive the award at a banquet in her honor at the Hotel Capstone in Tuscaloosa, Alabama on Tuesday, March 9 …
In a message to Bob Zellner, author with Constance Curry of the 2009 Lillian Smith Award-winning The Wrong Side of Murder Creek: A White Southerner in the Freedom Movement, Dr. Louis McLoud recalls his relevant personal history: …
New York Times best-selling author Mary Kay Andrews chooses her words — and, it seems, her bedtime reading material — carefully. Fortunately for NewSouth Books, Enchanted Evening Barbie and the Second Coming by Rheta Grimsley Johnson won a spot on her night table and now on her blog. The author of Savannah Breeze, Blue Christmas, and the soon-to-be-published The FIxer Upper calls Enchanted Evening Barbie a “Valentine to life in the South,” and praises Johnson’s “ability to make both the comic and tragic come alive in this wonderful memoir.” Thanks, Ms. Andrews, for the gift.