Literary Friday

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving and fruitful Black Friday. Literary Friday is back today with two weeks’ worth of literary links, news and a full recap of our symposium on Flannery O’Connor. Also on special today is Greenwood, Mississippi, author Robin O’Bryant’s book, “Ketchup is a Vegetable: And Other Lies Moms Tell Themselves,” which is only 99 cents in e-book format on Amazon for 24 hours.

O’Connor Symposium Recap

For those who couldn’t make it to the Flannery O’Connor Symposium in Lafayette earlier this month, we’ve got a full recap along with pics and lots of video from the event. Click here to see what you missed.

Literary News & Blogs 

Lots of “best of 2012” book lists have been coming out just in time for the holidays. Publisher’s Weekly lists Ron Rash’s “The Cove,” while The New York Times’ 100 Notable Books of 2012 includes Richard Ford’s “Canada,” Barbara Kingsolver’s “Flight Behavior,” “Gathering of Waters” by Bernice L. McFadden, Toni Morrison’s “Home,” Wiley Cash’s “A Land More Kind Than Home,” Jesmyn Ward’s “Salvage the Bones” and “Shine Shine Shine” by Lydia Netzer.

USA Network will begin shooting a pilot of an adaptation of a short story by Elmore Leonard in Miami this January. The show doesn’t have a title yet but will be about a Miami businessman contemplating a run for political office and star Bryan Greenberg and Stephanie Sigman.

The Prissy Book Snob has a review of Attica Locke’s “The Cutting Season,” one of our Fall/Winter Reading List picks.

Can you spot the Southern titles on Flavorwire’s Ideal Bookshelves of 10 Famous Readers?

Wiley Cash’s “A Land More Kind Than Home” comes out in paperback January 22. Watch the new trailer, then plan to spend some of that Christmas money buying the book.

Lit Reactor’s list of Ten Awesome Authors You’ve Never Heard Of Before includes Kentucky native Holly Goddard Jones, who The New York Press predicts “could very well join the tradition of America’s great Southern writers.”

Want to help those affected by Hurricane Sandy? Donate a new or used book to help build a new collection of materials for New York City libraries.

Shortlist.com has the 40 Most Gruesome Deaths in Literature, starting with the demise of Bunny Corcoran in Donna Tartt’s “The Secret History.”

Real South magazine has a feature on Tim Westover’s “Real Auraria” this month. Scroll to page 14 to read.

Garden & Gun has a recipe for Hemingway’s Josie Russell Cocktail from new book “To Have and Have Another: A Hemingway Cocktail Companion.”

(Non)Required Reading

The Miami Times interviews author Carl Hiaasen about the decline of South Florida.

The Truman Capote expose of the lost manuscript of “Answered Prayers” in Vanity Fair is now available online, including a recently discovered chapter titled “Yachts and Things.”

Literary Events

The Georgia Literary Festival has announced that its 2013 event will be held November 8-10 in Milledgeville, the hometown of Flannery O’Connor. Mark your calendars. We certainly are!

The Poe Museum in Richmond, Virginia, will light up its enchanted garden tonight at 6 p.m. EST. The free Poe Illumination includes thousands of lights, hot apple cider and carols, along with costumed interpreters showing what Christmas was like in Poe’s time. The museum will also display some of the actual gifts the author received from his friends and family in Richmond.

The Wren’s Nest, home of storyteller and author Joel Chandler Harris in Atlanta, is holding its free Victorian Holiday Open House on December 9, Harris’s birthday. There will be storytelling, tours, music, hot apple cider, birthday cake and other treats from 1-4 p.m.

The Zora Neale Hurston Festival of the Arts and Humanities in the author’s hometown of Eatonville, Florida, is scheduled for January 26-February 3.

New in Southern Voice 

deja vu is like a pinball machine, a poem by Texan Stanley M. Noah, and Flashlights, a story about a father and daughter taking care of each other by Jessica Wimmer.

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.