I’m off on a short road this trip morning to Jackson, Tennessee, to speak on a panel for SOUTHERN WRITERS ON WRITING with fellow Tennessee authors Niles Reddick and River Jordan, so I’m short on time to write a blog post. Instead, I’m going to share something from a post I did ten years ago:
“Southern Writers on the River: The Burden of Memory and History”
I hope you’ll take a few minutes to click on the link and travel with me down memory lane, where I reflect on a magical day spent down by the Mississippi River with members of the Yoknapatawpha Writers Group, which met monthly for several years to critique one another’s works-in-progress and to share our journeys in the written word. Here’s a teaser:
So yesterday when some of the folks in my writers critique group gave me their gentle but wise feedback on the pages I had just penned—the pages about some difficult and dark things that happened during those same years that Morris chronicled in The Last of the Southern Girls—I listened to their suggestions because I respect their journeys and their own personal endeavors to capture their memories, and our collective Southern history, in the short stories and novels they are drafting.
Thanks for reading, and have a great weekend. Come back next week for some NEW POSTS, including an interview with another Tennessee author . . . .