#southern-literature

#southern-literature

Fia Backström describes her experience of West Virginia as akin to being called by aliens, framing the region in a way that echoes a long history of it being seen as strange and backward.

Louisiana has a really great infrastructure for film, with really talented filmmakers. That's where I started my career, so I've done many films there. I came up in New Orleans in the art department, right before Katrina in 2004.

From November 1909 until August 1912, an unknown assailant - or assailants - zigzagged across southwestern Louisiana and southeastern Texas. Many Black families were slaughtered in their homes under the cover of darkness. An ax - the telltale weapon - was almost always found in the bloody aftermath. All but one of the scenes were located within a mile of the Southern Pacific Railroad's Sunset Route. In each case, a mother and child were always among the victims.

From brilliant new voices to seasoned icons, many of the past year's breakout works are by Black authors. In June, Great Black Hope, a coming-of-age story reckoning with privilege and belonging, made first-time author Rob Franklin a household name. And in July, Stephanie Wambugu's gorgeous debut novel Lonely Crowds, which explores the intimacy and frustration in the relationship between two lifelong friends, climbed bestseller lists.

This devastating début novel takes the form of an oral history about a tragedy that shatters a family. At its heart is a couple who arrived in the U.S. in the late nineteen-nineties as refugees from Afghanistan. They prospered, and brought up four children in an affluent suburb in Virginia. Rotating testimonies from people they know-family friends, a cousin, lawyers-offer theories about what led to the novel's central catastrophe.

Outside, the Alabama Booksmith is so unassuming it's as if Reiss had forgotten that he was running a retail business: a two-story, nearly windowless structure, surrounded by office parks and parking lots, on a dead-end street in a suburb of Birmingham. Inside, the vibe is half 1970, half 1870, with wood panelling, rattan chairs, and a drop-tile ceiling-but also patterned tablecloths, cozy curtains, a functioning fireplace, and an oversized hourglass.