Submit a play!

If you're a Southern playwright looking for an audience, you might want to submit a play for consideration in the Southern Writers' Project Festival of New Plays. The weekend-long festival is held in the spring of each year as part of the Alabama Shakespeare Festival (ASF). If your play is chosen for the festival, it'll also be considered for future ASF productions. There are two conditions: 1) You must be a Southern writer 2) Your script must be set in the South or deals specifically with Southern issues, characters, or themes.

Interesting article in Glamour

Katie Couric has an interesting interview with Kathryn Stockett in Glamour Magazine. Stockett makes the point that it's hard to answer the question, "How does the African American race feel about the book?" as it's not as though all African Americans have the same point of view...

Now, I feel dumb for asking the question at all! Maybe the point is to not focus so much on one perspective but give everyone a chance to be heard -- which is the message of the book, after all.

What do you think of The Help?

Just finished reading The Help by Mississippi author Kathryn Stockett. I know I'm late to the game, as the book's been receiving rave reviews since it was published in 2009. I really enjoyed it -- great characters, lots of plot twists, and a satisfying ending. As a novel, it was very engaging. As a political commentary on race relations, to me it seemed powerful, but I wonder what African American audiences think.

For me, growing up in Scotland as a white person and moving to the States well after the Civil Rights Movement, I feel like an outsider to this part of history. Are the characters realistic, both white and black? Stockett studied Susan Tucker's book Telling Memories Among Southern Women, and she obviously knows her subject, growing up in Jackson, Mississippi. Mainstream media love her novel, as do book clubs. But what about specifically black audiences? Or is it not cool to ask that question?

Excellent blog for writers!

Former literary agent Nathan Bransford has an excellent blog with a whole list of "Publishing Essentials," including templates for query letters, advice on how to write a novel, information about how the publishing industry works, and tons more. Check it out: http://blog.nathanbransford.com/

Leaf & String Book Festival

I was in Galax, VA, this weekend with family and discovered that the Leaf & String book festival had taken over downtown Galax. What a great festival! Although I'd missed the authors events (we got there kind of late), I went into Chapters Bookshop, which sponsors the festival. Lovely book store with lots of local author displays and gifts to peruse. And out on the streets, musicians played fiddle, mandolin, the bass, and banjo. And vendors sold delicious barbecue.

New Southerner Magazine Suspended

Uh-oh.... Another one bites the dust! New Southerner Magazine has suspended publication while they "explore options for restructuring and relaunching operations." Archives of the online magazine are still available on the website. So much for the idea that online magazines are easier to sustain than print ones... Any thoughts?

My updated website

Just wanted to plug my own website: www.louisajdang.com

It's still very basic, but I've changed the focus from freelance writing to my upcoming (hopefully!) novel. I'm hoping to finish it up this summer and then look for a literary agent...yikes! Wish me luck! Anyone have any advice/experience to share about finding a literary agent? Are there any that specifically focus on Southern authors/fiction?

THEMA seeking submissions

THEMA is a Louisiana-based literary journal that publishes short stories, poems, photography, and art. Each issue focuses on a specific theme, which must be an integral part of the plot:

Wisecracks & poems (deadline July 1, 2011)

Who keeps it tiday? (November 1, 2011)

White wine chilling (March 1, 2012)

Sounds like a great idea!

Therese Fowler: Exposure

I had the pleasure of attending a reading by Therese Fowler last Thursday at Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh for her new book Exposure. This is her third novel, and it's about the controversial topic of teenage romance and sexting -- when is it harmless, and when is it a crime? Therese and I both graduated from the MFA in creative writing program at N.C. State University. She and her first novel, Souvenir, got snapped up by the big publishers, and it's been uphill ever since!

National Poetry Month

Oops! I had forgotten that April is National Poetry Month. I'm not an expert on poetry by any stretch, but I definitely appreciate the need to honor our poets! You might want to check out the interview of Tennessee-based poet Kate Daniels in Southern Literary Review. Here's a tiny segment of the interview...

Kate Daniels: "Robert Penn Warren would be the Southern poet who had the most influence on me – the lack of compression, the grandiosity of syntax, the very quirky speaking voice in his poems were all things that I found very appealing aesthetically and very encouraging personally. I always had a hard time with (some other poets) because of how highly formal, how self conscious, the poems seemed to me. They intimidated me in a way, but also made me anxious: so boxed-in, so careful, so neat and tidy. Just the way that Warren’s poems, particularly the later poems, sprawled all over the page was really inspiring to me. There was a way to break out of jail! And because his poems sounded so different from everyone else’s, they became important to me – as a young southern woman of working class origins – as a model for an independent literary life."