Q and A with Sue Montgomery, Author of Whisper in the Blood

April 15, 2015 · by Christina Kaylor | in Author Interviews, The Writing Life | tagged Al Capone, Chicago and Prohibition, Chicago Organized Crime, dog racing in Chicago, Druidism, Immigrants in 1920s Chicago, Indiegogo, Iowa Summer Writing Festival, Iowa Writers' Workshop, Italian-Irish immigrant conflicts, Lace-curtain Irish, Mammouth Star Publishing, S. H. Montgomery, Sue Montgomery, The Mafia, The Outfit, Whisper in the Blood | 5 Comments

Several years ago, I attended the 26th Annual Iowa Summer Writing Festival, the non-credit affiliate of the famed Iowa Writers’ Workshop, whose graduates fill the ranks of the best and brightest in American letters. Ours was a workshop class of 12 aspiring novelists which ran the gamut of genres – literary, historical, women’s fiction, and crime. I […]

On the Southern Literary Trail: Part One—Andalusia, Flannery O’Connor’s Farm Home

March 5, 2013 · by Christina Kaylor | in Field Trips, The Writing Life | tagged Alice Walker, Andalusia, Civil War, Flannery O'Connor, General Sherman, Georgia College and State University, grotesque, Iowa Writers' Workshop, Joel Chandler Harris, Milledgeville Georgia, National Book Award, Robert Fitzgerald, Robert Penn Warren, Sally Fitzgerald, Sewanee Review, Southern Gothic, Southern Literary Trail | 4 Comments

Here in the South, we are blessed to have The Southern Literary Trail, the nation’s only tri-state literary trail, featuring writers’ homes in Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi—three states said to be perennially at the bottom of US literacy rates. William Faulkner was once asked, Why don’t more Southerners read? He replied, Because they’re too busy writing. […]