July 22, 2011 In the opening of Margaret Mitchell’s novel, Gone With the Wind, Gerald O’Hara makes an observation his daughter Scarlett never forgets: “Land is the only thing in the world that amounts to anything, for t’is the only thing in this world that lasts.” He might have noted that certain pernicious myths have staying power, too. Not least among them, of course, is the notion of a noble Lost Cause that lurks behind the Confederate nostalgia of Gone With the Wind itself.

July 20, 2011 It’s hard enough for an unpublished writer to sell one literary novel in this publishing climate; to sell two must feel a little like winning the lottery. Courtney Miller Santo, a graduate of the MFA program at the University of Memphis now knows the feeling: William Morrow has bought her debut novel, Roots of the Olive Tree, along with her next book, “for six figures,” according to Publisher’s Weekly.

July 19, 2011 Knoxville novelist Margaret Lazarus Dean has always been fascinated by space travel, and her first novel, The Time It Takes to Fall, is set on the Space Coast during the time of the Challenger disaster. So it makes sense that she made the trip to Florida for the final launch of the orbiter Atlantis on July 10. In an essay for the Knoxville News-Sentinel, Dean describes what it’s like to watch the end of an era for American space flight:

July 6, 2011 Michael Knight’s transcendent novel The Typist won’t be out in paperback till next month, but O magazine is recommending it for the beach bag nonetheless. In the summer-reading guide, Tiffany Sun praises its “quiet, spare prose,” noting: “With The Typist, Knight paints a picture of military ennui in a city facing desperate economic times, giving us beautifully drawn characters who are at once vulnerable and unknowable as they seek solace, diversion—and eventually, purpose—amid instability.”

July 1, 2011 The sign isn’t up yet, and the news was grim for a long time, so it’s perhaps understandable that Ashley Dacus, public-relations and events coordinator at the Booksellers at Laurelwood, keeps getting asked when Davis-Kidd Booksellers will close. In fact, it isn’t closing; it’s growing. According to a feature in this week’s Memphis Flyer, owner Neil Van Uum has big plans for the new/old store: