In a case of the acorn not falling far from the tree, Phil Noble Jr., son of the author of NewSouth’s 2003 memoir Beyond the Burning Bus — about the civil rights movement in Anniston, Alabama — is launching an international website, Hope Plus, that promotes social politics …
A nice review for a very nice book. That’s how we characterize the write-up of Michelle Edwards’ classic of Jewish children’s literature, Chicken Man, which appeared in “Page Turners,” a blog of the Greensboro, North Carolina News & Record …
NewSouth received a nice note from Harper Lee enthusing about publication of Virginia Van Der Veer Hamilton’s new memoir, Teddy’s Child: Growing Up in the Anxious Southern Gentry Between the Great Wars. Says Ms. Lee to Dr. Hamilton: “It’s beautiful. I loved your book!” …
Seems one talented poet has found another in this news from Mary Carol Moran, who shares that her next book will be published by Sue Walker’s Negative Capability Press on November 30 …
Among the pleasures and perils of being a book editor is that the daily mail usually contains queries from folks who want to get published. Submissions fall into three categories: 1) the ones that are so good and so appropriate for the house that the answer is an easy yes; 2) the ones that are so bad or so inappropriate for the house that the answer is an even easier no; and 3) the ones that are either appropriate but badly written or inappropriate but engrossing. In the acquisitions process, categories 1 and 2 take little time, but category 3 involves back and forth discussion and agonizing efforts to calculate the editorial costs of rescuing a bad manuscript …
Glen Browder’s new book The South’s New Racial Politics received thoughtful praise in a highly positive review from the Southern Political Report. John Tures, Associate Professor of Political Science at LaGrange College, says he will be recommending the book to fellow professors and political science majors in his American Government class, and even students in his interdisciplinary American Experience course, “showing how Browder’s book is written for a wide audience” …
Poet and biographer Foster Dickson, author of I Just Make People Up: Ramblings with Clark Walker (NewSouth Books 2008) and The Life and Poetry of John Beecher (1904-1980) (Edwin Mellen Press 2009) will give a lecture entitled “Southern Exposure” at the Ottawa International Writers Festival on October at 4:00 pm. Dickson will discuss his complete body of work as Southern studies of oft-neglected people …
Alabama’s first-ever statewide Big Read project moves into high gear next week as Big Read regional coordinators and NewSouth Books arrange for delivery of close to 12,000 copies of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer to librarians across the state. The Big Read Bus will travel the state on September 10 and 11 distributing copies of a unique edition of the Mark Twain classic created especially for Alabama readers by NewSouth Books. On its two-day mission, the bus will stop at the main branches of library systems in 14 cities; local librarians will then send copies to area branches. A big banner announces the vehicle’s purpose, and plans are being made from library to library to celebrate its arrival …
As America honors Senator Ted Kennedy, two NewSouth authors remember fondly their time spent with the late senator. Politics of Presidential Appointment author Sheldon Hackney, and Leslie Dunbar, contributor to American Crisis, Southern Solutions (with Hackney) and Where We Stand: Voices of Southern Dissent, recall their affectionate memories of the “Lion of the Senate” …
“I wanted to be just like Tom Sawyer as kid, but years later I realized it was Mr. Twain whom I truly wished to emulate.” So says award-winning author Ted Dunagan, whose debut novel A Yellow Watermelon, NewSouth Books published last year. Mr. Dunagan is one of two speakers, along with Twain scholar Dr. Alan Gribbben, that NewSouth Books, publisher of the Alabama Big Read edition of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, will be sending to talk to Big Read program participants about Twain and his literary legacy and influence …