Literary Friday

Tweet Chat With Janis Owens 

Today from 1-2 p.m. CST (2-3 EST), we’ll be chatting with “American Ghost” author Janis Owens @JanisOwens. To participate, we suggest using tweetchat.com. The hashtag is #southernlit. If you’re not on Twitter, feel free to leave a question on our Facebook page and we’ll make sure it gets answered. We’ll also be giving away a copy of “American Ghost” during the chat. Get to know Owens and her own ghosts before the chat in our interview with her.

Literary News & Blogs 

Honoring its location’s literary past, Backspace Bar & Kitchen held a soft opening in New Orleans last weekend. Owned by Robert Watters, the man behind Rick’s Cabaret, Backspace features Underwood typewriters around the bar, volumes of Capote, Hemingway and Sherwood Anderson and their favorite drinks at the bar, including Papa’s Cuba Libra and Fitzgerald’s Gin Rickey. Previously Evelyn’s Bar, Backspace is located at 139 Chartres St. in the French Quarter. Read more about it on Nola Defender.

“Hemingway’s Girl” Erika Robuck revealed the cover of her new book Call Me Zelda on Instagram this week.

The National Book Awards were handed out this week, and Shelf Awareness points out how the event went off without a hitch despite the National Book Foundation’s office being hit by Hurricane Sandy. During the event, New Orleans-born Elmore Leonard received the medal for distinguished contribution to American letters, and Louise Erdrich took home the award for fiction for her novel “The Round House.”

Since Gillian Flynn‘s first book “Sharp Objects” is on our Fall/Winter Reading List, we thought readers would want to know that she’s landed a book deal with Random House for her next novel and also a Young Adult novel. No titles or details are being released, but the publisher has said her followup to “Gone Girl” will be released in 2015.

In other book news, keep an eye out for a special promotion for Kimberly Brock’s “The River Witch” on Amazon during Black Friday. In celebration of Kindle’s fifth anniversary, the site is promoting 25 titles that will cost just $1.99 that day, and her book is one of them.

William Joyce, the man behind the Acacemy Award-winning short film “The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore” and Shreveport, Louisiana’s Moonbot Studios, has a new film coming out next week. “The Rise of the Guardians,” an animated adventure that teams up Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and The Tooth Fairy, based on more of his books, is due out in theaters November 21 and is already getting Oscar buzz.

(Non)Required Reading

Our Flannery O’Connor Symposium speaker Christina Bieber Lake alerted us to a piece she wrote about AMC’s “The Walking Dead” during last weekend’s events. Read Zombie Nation, her account of why she loves the show, on Books & Culture.

The Atlantic‘s piece There’s Nothing Lazy About Working From Bed reveals what we here at Deep South already knew: Lots of people are not working at desks these days. In the last line, the article admits this isn’t exactly a new phenomenon. One Southern writer once described himself as a “horizontal author” who always kept a cigarette and beverage handy.

Goodreads interviews Tom Wolfe on his new novel “Back to Blood” this month.

(Non)Required Listening 

The Literary Jukebox, a project by Maria Popova, matches up book quotes with songs daily. Listen to her pairing of a quote by Helen Keller on Mark Twain to music by Sean Hayes in a recent post.

New in Southern Voice

Family Gathering, a poem about Thanksgiving escapades in the woods, by Florida poet John Davis Jr.

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.

Check out the Literary Friday Pinterest board here.