Interview With Dorothy Allison
One of the great Southern women writers still kicking in her sixties, Dorothy Allison is best known for her novel Bastard Out of Carolina. A work of fiction, Bastard is based on Allison’s experience growing up poor and abused in Greenville, South Carolina. Since exposing her deepest family secrets, Allison has become a teacher of what she calls “baby” writers, a voice for survivors of incest and a pioneer of the working class genre of Southern fiction. We interviewed her by phone from her home in Northern California about her plans to attend the Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival later this month, her ability to tell lies and the near-death experience that cured her writer’s block.
Literary News
Our readalong for Joshilyn Jackson’s The Opposite of Everyone continues through March 18. Notes for part 2 go up Monday!
We have a preview of the Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival with the master classes, panels, theater productions and special events we’re most looking forward to this year.
The Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance has renamed its book awards for Pat Conroy and presents a long list that also serves a a dream Southern reading list.
Writer Kerry Lonsdale offers up a list of Beach Reads & Cocktails 2016 that will help you get a head start on summer reading (and drinking).
Read The Paris Review’s 1956 interview with William Faulkner in which he suggests to read his writing four times if you didn’t understand it the first, second or third time.
Literary Events
The University of Tennessee at Knoxville’s Writers in the Library series presents Poetry Spring, a series of readings and author chats, through April 18.
Applications for The Kerouac Project’s writer-in-residence positions are due by March 13. Four residences consist of a three-month stay in the Orlando, Florida, cottage where Jack Kerouac wrote his novelThe Dharma Bums.
The Sweet Potato Queens Musical is happening March 17-27 at Theater Under the Stars Underground in Houston, Texas.
Sundress Academy for the Arts in Knoxville, Tennessee, wraps up its series of workshops as part of its OUTSpoken platform for the LGBTQ community on March 26.
Tennessee Williams Birthday Celebration is scheduled for March 1-31 in Key West, Florida, with a party, classic film series and forum, theater performances, art exhibits and more. (pictured)
And the Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival takes place March 30-April 3 this year with Megan Abbott, Dorothy Allison, Mary Badham, Kiese Laymon, Rick Bragg and lots more. View the full schedule here. (Saints and Sinners literary conference also takes place April 1-3 in New Orleans.)
Win the chance to work in Ernest Hemingway’s Key West writing studio by entering the new Florida Keys Flash Fiction Contest. Entries are due March 31.
New in Southern Voice
Higher Ground, an essay about moving to the Mississippi Gulf Coast by Aftermath Lounge author Margaret McMullan.
To find out more about your favorite Southern authors’ haunts and hangouts, download the Deep South Literary Trail App, available direct from iTunes and for Android and perfect for those winter road trips.
Have a piece of news, event, video or something else related to Southern lit that you’d like us to consider for Literary Friday? Send an e-mail to editor@deepsouthmag.com.
