Literary Friday, Edition 76

Fall/Winter Reading List is Here – Plus a Giveaway!

We quietly posted our 2013 Fall/Winter Reading List on Monday and said we’d save the fanfare for today. With 24 new releases, including several author debuts and a few classics, the list spans from mystery to memoir, spiritual to historical and romantic to coming of age. You’ll notice some big names like Flannery O’Connor, Fannie Flagg and Lee Smith, but also meet new authors, like Kent Wascom, Michael Farris Smith, Barbara Davis and Karen Spears Zacharias, whose debut novels are quite powerful.

We’ll be scheduling Twitter chats with authors on the list and giving away books all winter long, so stay tuned each Friday for updates. Today, we have a copy of “Mother Of Rain,” the first work of fiction by Karen Spears Zacharias, to give away. To enter to win, just comment here with what you’re looking forward to reading this season, and we’ll choose a winner at random on Monday. Also, here’s the chat schedule so far:

October 18 – Rita Leganski on “The Silence of Bonaventure Arrow”

January 31 – Wiley Cash on “This Dark Road to Mercy”

Literary News

Making the rounds this week is an essay by Atlanta author Susan Rebecca White (pictured) in new magazine The Bitter Southerner. Titled “What I Took: 42 Days in Reno,” the story illustrates the breakup of her marriage.

Paul Collins at The Literary Detective investigates three possibly unattributed works by Edgar Allan Poe by firing up the author attribution software used on J.K. Rowling in The New Yorker. He also posted the stories on his blog so fans can make up their own mind.

Meanwhile, “Mrs. Poe” author Lynn Cullen lists 11 Things You Didn’t Know About Edgar Allan Poe in The Huffington Post.

A Tumblr account called Thomas Wolfe Was Wrong refutes his claim that “you can’t go home again.”

We interviewed Wally Lamb on the New Orleans songwriter who inspired his third book, along with Mary Gauthier herself this week. Both will appear – and meet for the first time – in a panel at the Louisiana Book Festival November 2.

A clip from James Franco’s “As I Lay Dying” has been released on Indiewire. The movie is going straight to DVD instead of hitting theaters next month as planned and hasn’t gotten positive reviews, but we’ll let you be the judge.

The October selection of The Little, Brown Twitter Book Club is Donna Tartt’s new novel “The Goldfinch.” The publisher will be giving away copies on Twitter through October 15 and discussing the book in a chat at the end of the month. Join in using the hashtag #lbbookclub.

Get a sneak peek of the 2014 Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival, which announced special guests Dorothy Allison, Laura Lippman and Diane Ladd this week. Click here to see our recap from last year’s event.

Literary Events

The free Southern Festival of Books in Nashville kicks off today and lasts through the weekend at War Memorial Plaza. This year’s authors include Ace Atkins, Rick Bragg, Wiley Cash, Therese Ann Fowler, Tom Franklin, Ann Hite, Jill McCorkle, Mary Alice Monroe, Susan Rebecca White, along with several special sessions.

The Library at Birmingham Botanical Gardens presents an evening with “The Drunken Botanist” author Amy Stewart October 25.  Cocktails from the book will be served, and admission is $20.

“Forrest Gump” author Winston Groom will be at Page and Palette in Fairhope, Alabama, October 30 to sign copies of his latest book “The Aviators.”

The Louisiana Book Festival is scheduled for November 2 in Baton Rouge this year, with Wally Lamb, Shirley Ann Grau, Rita Leganski and Beth Ann Fennelly attending. See our preview of authors and events here.

Fannie Flagg will be at the Arthur R. Outlaw Convention Center in Fairhope November 5 for a luncheon, discussion and booksigning for her new novel “The All-Girl Filling Station’s Last Reunion.”

The Festival of Words in Grand Coteau, Louisiana, will be held November 7-9 with readings by nationally recognized authors, creative writing workshops, a community stage for open mics and drive-by poetry.

The Key West Film Festival November 13-17 will feature special guest Mariel Hemingway and her film ”Running From Crazy” about her family’s history of mental illness. After the November 15 premiere and a Q&A session, a reception will be held at the Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum.

New in Southern Voice 

Ashtray Coffin, a poem about a dead sister’s lipstick, by Forrest Maddux Blackbourn, and Cemetery: Osceola, a story about choosing a grave plot in northeastern Arkansas, by Megan Clark.

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