Literary Friday

Fall/Winter Reading List & Twitter Chat With Erika Robuck

Our 2012 Fall/Winter Reading List of 17 books to curl up with as temperatures start to drop debuted on Wednesday! Included on the list is “Hemingway’s Girl” by Erika Robuck (pictured). We interviewed Robuck about channeling the literary great for her book and will be chatting with her this afternoon from 1-2 p.m. CST (2-3 EST) on Twitter. We suggest using tweetchat.com for that chat, and the hashtag is #southernlit.

If you want to read up more on Robuck and “Hemingway’s Girl,” check out these other interviews & reviews:

Great New Books Book Club 
Between the Sheets 
Literate Housewife 
BookNAround

We’ll be scheduling more Twitter chats through the winter, but next up is “Auraria” author Tim Westover. His interview will be posted next week, and we’ll be chatting with him October 12. “Auraria’s” story of a Georgia ghost town and the supernatural elements Westover weaves in blew us away, so get a copy if you don’t have one already and start reading!

Literary News & Blogs 

Dinah Friend’s photographs of literature’s famous food scenes made the rounds on Tumblr before being picked up by NPR. See her take on a spread from “To Kill A Mockingbird” (above) and Kerouac’s apple pie and ice cream from “On the Road.”

Lit Reactor broke down the fan base for “The Great Gatsby.” Find out how many of its readers of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic are really just wannabe novelists.

News of a huge donation of Hemingway’s works to the University of South Carolina was reported this week. It seems a doctor in Mississippi had been collecting all the writer’s works and rare items like editor’s proofs for the past 50 years. It may be the most complete collection, with more than 1,200 copies of novels and first editions, and will make the school a top research center for the study of Hemingway.

Tuesday was William Faulkner’s birthday. We marked the day by posting a set of his books dating from 1956 scored at the local library book sale. Meanwhile, Deep South reader Conrad Deitrick drew a picture of the Mississippi writer to hang on his wall.

Banned Books Week starts September 30. Can you find the Southern reads in this display from San Francisco shop The Booksmith?

(Non)Required Reading 

Kim Dalferes’ Top Ten Things I Miss About Florida.

And in (non)required listening, check out Southern Spines’ podcast with Joshilyn Jackson in celebration of “A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty” being out in paperback this week.

The National Book Festival’s 52 Great Reads has a handy map that recommends books from each state.

The Oxford American‘s Parish Chic column examines fashion on the set of New Orleans-set television series “Treme.” We also posted this week about why “Treme” will never go out of style.

Announcements 

Deep South will be presenting a booksigning and talk by “Butterfly in the Typewriter” author Cory MacLauchlin (pictured) at The Saint Street Inn in Lafayette, Louisiana, October 25. Meet the latest biographer of “Confederacy of Dunces” author John Kennedy Toole and hear him talk about Toole’s Lafayette connections and inspirations for his famous character, Ignatius J. Reilly. Talk starts at 5 p.m., with signing to follow.

Submissions of poetry and fiction are being accepted for an upcoming anthology of steampunk poetry and fiction set in an alternate Victorian-era city of New Orleans. To be considered for “New Orleans By Gaslight,” read the guidelines here. Deadline is October 31.

Support South Louisiana’s Festival of Words Kickstarter campaign to help fund this year’s event in Grand Coteau and surrounding areas November 8-10.

Literary Events  

100 Thousand Poets for Change events take place worldwide tomorrow. In the South, activities include an event at Cafe Istanbul in New Orleans, poets and music event in Nashville at Centennial Park and poetry readings at Java Cabana Coffeehouse in Memphis. See the Poets for Change blog for more details and a listing of events in other cities.

Monroeville, Alabama, presents two evenings of Mystery, Murder & Mayhem October 4 and 11 at historic Hybart House. The audience participation murder mystery dinner theater will feature icons and characters from the town’s literary heritage, including Mayella Ewell from “To Kill A Mockingbird,” Holly Golightly from “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” and Fannie Flagg’s Evelyn Couch from “Fried Green Tomatoes.” Tickets are $30 and must be reserved by September 28.

The Grand Festival of Art & Books will take place October 5-6 in Fairhope, Alabama, with more than 150 authors and exhibitors will be participating.

Scheduled for October 12-14, the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville will include Gillian Flynn, Lauren Groff, Kimberly Brock, Lydia Netzer, Ron Rash and Bobbie Ann Mason.

The Louisiana Book Festival will be held October 27 in Baton Rouge at the State Capitol. This festival hasn’t announced their lineup yet, but we’ve heard Cory MacLauchlin, Rick Bragg, Ron Rash and Wiley Cash will be there. See their banner ad at the top for more info.

The Fitzgerald Museum in Montgomery, Alabama, will hold its annual Halloween Bash on the grounds the evening of October 31. Dress in the theme of “Mobsters and Monsters.” Tickets are $25.

A Flannery O’Connor Symposium, co-sponsored by Deep South, is scheduled for November 9-10 in Lafayette, Louisiana, on the UL Lafayette campus. Tickets are on sale now here, and early bird registration deadline with discount is October 15.

Also the weekend of November 9-10 is the Georgia Literary Festival at the new Jekyll Island Convention Center, which will include Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey, Chef Hugh Acheson, Mary Kay Andrews and Steve Berry.

The Dahlonega Literary Festival will take place in historic Dahlonega, Georgia, November 10-11. So far, guest authors include K.M. Deal, Tim Westover and Regina Jeffers.

New in Southern Voice 

Rig Music, a story by Jennifer Riley about running moonshine in the North Carolina mountains, written in part as a tribute to Popcorn Sutton, a real-life “shiner” who committed suicide rather than go back to prison.

To find out more about Southern authors’ haunts and hangouts, download the Deep South Literary Trail App, now available direct from iTunes and for Android.