Editor's Note
Writers looking for a spell of literary community in a revered locale should note that registration is currently open for The Yok Shop conference in Oxford, Mississippi, which will take place June 5-7. Faculty for this year’s conference will include Michael Knight, M.O. Walsh, and Olivia Clare Friedman. For established and aspiring playwrights, the STAAR Theatre in Pulaski is seeking submissions for its One Act Play Contest. Plays must be set in the South, and submissions are open through June 30.
This week at Chapter 16, Amy Lyons reviews John of John, a novel by Booker Prize winner Douglas Stuart that focuses on a troubled father and son in remote rural Scotland. ” In John of John,” Amy writes, “Stuart is at the height of his formidable storytelling powers.”
In his essay “Rot and Redemption,” Nashvillian Ross Gentry considers the complexities of life and death on a long walk in the woods, accompanied by his “hiking-fellow,” Walt Whitman.
And we share an excerpt from Newsman: The Road from Route 2 Box 9, the forthcoming memoir by longtime Memphis journalist, political analyst, and commentator Otis Sanford.
News Roundup
- Major Jackson shared his list of poems you should know by heart with The New York Times.
- Margaret and Billy Renkl were interviewed for Memphis Magazine.
- Phyllis R. Dixon’s novel Something in the Water received the inaugural Astra Book Award for Best Fiction.
- Lisa C. Hickman was nominated for the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award for Between Grief and Nothing.
