Literary Friday, Edition 81

Flannery O’Connor’s Prayer Journal Giveaway

Georgia author Flannery O’Connor kept a journal of prayers while she was attending Iowa Writers’ Workshop from 1946-1947. Through the efforts of Georgia State University professor and friend of O’Connor Bill Sessions, that journal has now been published and was released by Farrar, Straus & Giroux this week. We have a copy of A Prayer Journal: Flannery O’Connor to give away, along with your very own prayer journal from the new collection by Val Marie Paper. To enter to win, comment on our review of O’Connor’s journal through November 20 and tell us what you plan to pray for this month. One winner will be chosen and, after being inspired by O’Connor’s journal, be able to write their own in Val Marie Paper’s colorful edition.

(Non)Required Reading

New fiction by Jeffrey Eugenides in The New Yorker details the breakup of a marriage in Houston, Texas.

Fall Reading Author Watch

Rita Leganski announced on her Facebook page yesterday that The Silence of Bonaventure Arrow has been nominated for the New Orleans Library Society Award. See our video of Rita talking about her book during the Louisiana Book Festival.

Literary News

New Orleans Culinary Library recently opened in the city and is the first public library in the South dedicated to culinary literature.

Speaking of food, read an excerpt from Kat Robinson’s new book Classic Eateries of the Ozarks and Arkansas River Valley.

Flavorwire’s 12 Vintage Advertisements Starring Famous Authors includes Hemingway hocking ale and Twain selling Campbell’s Soup.

Also, be sure to check Flavorwire’s list of 45 Great American Indie Bookstores to Support This Holiday Season as you’re buying those Christmas gifts.

North Carolina author Katherine Faw Morris ponders O’Connor’s Prayer Journal in The Paris Review, relating it to her own family’s brushes with religion.

LSU Press announced that it will publish the final volume in the Selected Letters of Robert Penn Warren Collection, due out next month.

Literary Events

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.

Race through the French Quarter on November 22 during the Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival’s Books and Booze Literary Scavenger Hunt, starting at the Beauregard-Keyes House.

New in Southern Voice 

A pair of poems by Valerie Westmark about the colonization of the South and its impact on slavery.

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