BOOK REVIEW

Novel portrays one woman’s struggle to overcome lost youth
By MARY POPHAM

Early in her new novel, At the Breakers, Mary Ann Taylor-Hall mentions two classics, Persuasion and Middlemarch. These titles foreshadow that her subject will mainly delineate women’s roles and their relationships to others: mothers and daughters, friends and lovers, co-workers and employers. Examining from many… »

BOOK REVIEW

Poems speak to loss with grace, acceptance
By LAUREL ANN BOGEN

Carine Topal’s collection of poems, In the Heaven of Never Before, is a heaven rich in imagery. From the opening poem, appropriately titled “From This,” where she writes
I come. From kraut, potato field, radish and iris bulbs,/burrowed from the tundra; from china cups and money/bags left… »

NONFICTION

Chilaquiles

By MICHELE NIESEN

The azaleas won’t flower. I pruned them below the new growth. I think you said above. The forsythia bloomed way too early, but I haven’t killed them yet. I got exactly five tomatoes this season and they were pretty good, I guess. I can’t remember if you told me to mulch the rhododendrons… »

FICTION

The Gold Star

By G.C. COMPTON

“Alice Rose, Alice Rose, wears her daddy’s shoes and her mommy’s clothes!”
Sung to the tune of a jump-rope song, the words came high-pitched and mocking across the Little Peabrook schoolyard. Again and again they rose, over the clatter of the seesaw and the merry-go-round, above the shrieking swing chains.
And one by one… »

FICTION

Growing-Out Jericho

By WILLIAM R. WOODARD

Vengeful teenagers dyed my golden retriever pink to get even with me for kicking them off Jericho Island. I was shaving Penny’s once-platinum locks to the skin when Kera called.
“Gus,” she said, “I know what happened. Is Penny okay?”
“She’s fluorescent pink,” I said. “How’d you find out so soon?”
“The kids posted a… »

POETRY

Miss Lizzie’s Kitchen

By EVE HOFFMAN

Turnip greens, green beans, green tomatoes
in the garden just outside Miss Lizzie’s screen door,
Mason jars of yellow-orange peaches, dense purple-red beets,
slow-cooked chicken dripping from the bone,
She had raised the chicken, wrung its neck, watched it
flap and flop all over the yard, blood soaking the ground.
Her father took her out of school at ten,
put… »

POETRY

Katrina’s Voices

By JENNY ROOT

“Gettridge’s only storm is his loneliness, which he bought for himself along with the Sheetrock & floorboards after he dug in his heels and started rebuilding.”
—The Times-Picayune, August 25, 2006

Now that I’m back
(No power or potable water
I’m fixing to live on.
White stucco shotgun
Lived in this house
Streets full of mud & trash
over 50… »

HALF-EMPTY MASON JAR

Why—and other questions that get us out of bed each morning

By LESLIE SMITH TOWNSEND

Lately, like any good existentialist—say Camus and Kierkegaard—I’ve been wondering what makes me, me? What is my purpose, great gift, uniqueness? Why am I here? What difference does my life make? These, of course, are personal applications of the universal question, What makes us human?
We all need answers. Sometimes these pesky questions… »

UP-AND-COMER POETRY

By CHRIS SHAFER

Small Saturday Poem
A flock of black birds passing
An old church steeple
Ink
Leaking in the Master’s pocket

Waking Me
Your hand on my back
First light on the valley floor
All that hungers hurries to the surface

Chris Shafer attended high school in Louisiana, after which he enlisted in the U.S. Navy and served as a combat medic. He now… »

Final Judges for Literary Contest

We are pleased to announce the final judges of poetry, fiction and nonfiction for our 2009 Literary Contest (listed below). New Southerner’s editorial advisory board and staff members will determine finalists in each category. Final judges will select winners and runners-up. The deadline for submissions is October 1, 2009. Click here for Contest Guidelines. We… »