Mississippi Book Festival 2019 – Page 3

Tag: Mississippi Book Festival 2019 (Page 3 of 7)

by Andrew Hedglin

I was drawn to pick up Michael Knight’s new novel, At Briarwood School for Girls, this spring because I remember appreciating his previous book, Eveningland, a collection of loosely interconnected short stories set around Mobile Bay, two years ago when he came for a signing. Knight’s writing can sometimes be very subtle and quiet, but also haunting and beautiful.

Knight’s new novel, set in 1994 at a boarding school in rural Virginia, is told from the perspective of Lenore Littlefield, a pregnant student of hidden talents and opaque motivations, and two lonely faculty members ostensibly charged with the education and guidance of Littlefield and her peers. The first person to whom Lenore reveals her predicament is her well-intentioned but somewhat indecisive history teacher, Lucas Bishop.

The final main character is Coach Patricia Fink, the basketball coach who prefers to live rather Zen-fully in the moment. She is not a fan of complications, but complications start to pile up after she inherits the task of directing the school play when the regular drama teacher departs on unexpected maternity leave. The selection of Coach Fink is no accident, however, as the headmistress keenly remembers her star turn as Maria in a Briarwood production of West Side Story, once upon a time.

The play Coach Fink is tasked with overseeing is The Phantom of Thornton Hall, a Pulitzer Prize winner from twenty years prior, written by one of Briarwood’s most famous–and enigmatic–alumni, Eugenia Marsh. The play, set in a Briarwood-like boarding school, is a conversation between a pregnant teenager and a ghost of a former student haunting the dormitory. Naturally, through a series of short machinations, Lenore is cast in the lead role, playing out her secret on stage.

Meanwhile, the Disney corporation threatens development just outside the ivied walls of the school. Opinion is starkly divided on campus about the construction of Disney’s America theme park just miles from the Manassas battlefield (a real thing that happened in the early 1990s in Virginia). This motif serves as a metaphor for the trio of main characters struggling to adapt to change in their own lives.

Ultimately, though, we can’t live in the past, cannot return to it. The best we can do is use it for counsel, which each character learns to do in their own unique way. It is a dreamy scene that Michael Knight sets before us to ponder these mysteries, in a time that can only seem simpler in retrospect.

Michael Knight will be at Lemuria on Wednesday, May 15, at 5:00 p.m. to sign and discuss At Briarwood School for Girls.

Author Q & A with Mary Miller

By Guest Author

On May 12, 2019

In Southern Fiction

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (May 12)

Oxford’s Mary Miller highlights a Mississippi coastal town with a thoughtful tale of a middle-aged man facing an uncertain and lonely future–until he adopts a dog on a whim and one thing leads to another.

Her new novel, Biloxi, focuses with compassion, humor and hope on Louis McDonald, Jr., a man who has made his share of mistakes and truly needs a fresh start. The plot is part unconventional, part relatable–and all-around encouraging.
Miller also authored two short story collections, Big World and Always Happy Hour, and her debut novel, The Last Days of California. She is a graduate of the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas and a former John and Renée Grisham Writer-in-Residence at Ole Miss.

In brief, Biloxi is the story of a 63-year-old man, Louis McDonald, Jr., facing his share of insecurities and mistakes (most of which are of his own doing), and who finds a new lease on life when he adopts a dog. As an accomplished young woman, did you find it hard to put yourself in his place, in this story told in first person?

Mary Miller

Thank you for the compliment! Though Louis is different from me in many ways–marital status, politics, gender, age–I understand him pretty well. He’s lonely. Life hasn’t turned out as he planned. He wants to connect with people, but he’s afraid of being hurt or rejected. All of these are human experiences, and there aren’t many among us who haven’t encountered each of them at some point in our lives. In other words, Louis is “everyman,” though he’s certainly more curmudgeonly than most.

The best word to describe Louis’s life–as a man who lives alone and is recently divorced with no real friends and a daughter and granddaughter he avoids–is “boring.” How does adopting a dog begin to change that in no time flat?

You’re right. Reading about a person alone in a house with his own thoughts is boring. When writing, the best thing you can do is give your narrator someone with whom to interact. This is writing 101.

Layla, the dog, gets Louis out into the world. He has to buy her a bed and food and toys; he wants to socialize her, so he takes her to the dog park. Early on, he thinks, “I also felt a strange need to entertain her, be interesting. Lucky for her I was an interesting man.” He comes to life with Layla around, finds himself making up songs and belting them out. He tries to teach her to catch and fetch and navigate the doggy door, and though he has little success, she’s given him renewed purpose. Layla is a reason for him to get out of bed in the morning.

Louis is not only insecure, but brutally frank as he not only ruminates about his fate to himself, but, quite often, when he ventures even the most mundane comments to people he doesn’t even know. This often results in great moments of humor for the reader (even when he’s talking to the dog). Does some of this come from your own straightforward thoughts in conversations with yourself and others in everyday life

Sure, though I’m nicer and more genial than Louis. He makes people uncomfortable a lot of the time. I hope I don’t make people uncomfortable! I do have a tendency to put my foot in my mouth, though, to say the wrong thing at the wrong time. I also talk to my dog a lot, ask her questions and bounce ideas off of her. She seems to appreciate being included.

Louis has a penchant for drinking (as is mentioned every day that passes in the Biloxi story), he doesn’t sleep well, worries about his future a great deal, and has a pattern of getting himself into awkward situations, to say the least. He comes to realize that even his father didn’t seem to care much for him. Why is it so easy to find this character as likable as we do?

I’m glad you found him likeable. Louis, with all of his flaws and self-sabotaging behavior, is pretty funny. Or it’s fun for the reader to watch him get himself into absurd situations. I don’t know if he would find himself humorous, though I think he might get a chuckle out of some of his actions in retrospect, like when he’s shoving religious pamphlets down his pants or lamenting the loss of his stolen blender.

There’s a ridiculous quality to the story, like the fact that his father’s lawyer “died after a swallowed toothpick punctured his bowels.” Even when Louis is taking himself seriously–when he’s dejected or drunk or worried–the prose and storyline work to balance it out. Or that was my goal; the reader will have to decide if I achieved it.

After everything he’s gone through in the course of just a few days, it seems that Louis’s redemption does come in the end. What’s the takeaway here?

Thank you! I don’t think in terms of the takeaway. I just tried to write a book that was true to this character and his life.

Most novels follow a pretty basic formula: put your character up a tree; throw rocks at him; bring him down. Louis is up the tree when I find him, and he’s been pelted with rocks for quite a while. And I keep chucking them. Ultimately, I’m not sure how much Louis’s life has changed by the end–it’s not like there’s any sort of formal redemption. He’s repairing his relationship with his daughter and her family, however, which is a start, and he’s got Layla by his side. Like Louis, I have my dog by my side, too.

Mary Miller will be at Lemuria on Tuesday, May 21, at 5:00 p.m. to sign and discuss Biloxi. Lemuria has selected Biloxi as its May 2019 selection for its First Editions Club for Fiction.

Harper Lee’s sequel mystery solved in Casey Cep’s ‘Furious Hours’

By Guest Author

On May 12, 2019

In Southern Fiction, Southern History, True Crime

By Jim Ewing. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (May 12)

One of the enduring mysteries after the 2016 death of author Harper Lee was: Did she work on a book to follow her iconic To Kill a Mockingbird and was there an unpublished manuscript?

Casey Cep in Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee does an admirable job in solving the mystery—in more ways that one.

Foremost, she solves the mystery of the much rumored book that Lee was reportedly working on through painstaking journalism, tracking down sources, doing interviews, resurrecting lost notes and compiling a fascinating picture of Lee’s life post-Mockingbird.

But she also resurrects the tale itself, the story that Lee referred to as “The Reverend,” producing a book within a book by writing herself the book that Lee couldn’t find a way to piece together.

Cep recounts that Lee spent three years trying to write “The Reverend,” going about it the same way that she had helped childhood friend Truman Capote compile his book In Cold Blood.

Just as Lee and Capote spent months in Kansas doing interviews and watching the murder trial that resulted in the “nonfiction novel” Capote wrote to great acclaim, Cep writes, Lee attempted to recreate the feat alone in Alexander City, Ala.

Lee’s case of suspicious deaths revolved around the Rev. Willie Maxwell, beginning with his wife Mary Lou found dead in her car Aug. 3, 1970. While investigators couldn’t prove a murder, they found that “his private life bore little resemblance to the one his parishioners thought he was living, and no resemblance at all to those he extolled in his sermons.”

He was acquitted at trial, based on the possibly perjured testimony of his neighbour, Dorcas Anderson, whom 15 months after the death, he married.

She was 27 to his 46 and, conveniently, and suspiciously also, a new widow.

It was a trend. Then, his brother died and, like Mary Lou before him, Maxwell had taken out several life insurance policies on him, totaling $100,000 (about $500,000 today).

On Sept. 20, 1972, Dorcas was found dead—with 17 life insurance policies the Reverend had on her.

He married wife number three in November, 1974, with Ophelia Burns. Shortly after, a nephew died.

All were under suspicious circumstances that neither police nor insurance investigators could prove were the product of a crime.

The community began to view the black preacher as a hoodoo conjurer. After his first wife’s death, “a lot of people were convinced that he had used voodoo to fix the jury … and charm a younger woman” into marrying him, but “as time passed and more people died, the stories about the reverend grew stronger, stranger, and, if possible, more sinister.”

It was said “he hung white chickens upside down from the pecan trees outside his house to keep away unwanted spirits and painted blood on his doorsteps to keep away the authorities. … Drive by his front door, and the headlights on any car would go dark. Say a cross word against him, and he would lay a trick on you.”

One could certainly see how this Southern gothic tale would be enticing for the creator of such characters as Scout, Atticus—and the scary Boo Radley.

But Cep posits that in “The Reverend” Lee believed she would redeem herself as a story teller of the “true” South—where the status of race relations was more complex and nuanced than black and white, as in the morality tale of Mockingbird.

“Mockingbird had been read as a clarion call for civil rights, but Lee’s views were more complicated than any editor wanted to put into print,” Cep writes, as demonstrated by Go Set a Watchman, the original text for Mockingbird.

When Maxwell was brought to trial a final time, in 1977, with the suspicious death of Maxwell’s adopted daughter, Lee was there to watch it, and she found the medium for writing a book that would parallel Mockingbird, but present it in a more complex manner.

It had a black hero, who was also a vigilante operating outside the law; a black villain, who while masquerading as a preacher was also believed to be evil incarnate; a white crusading attorney, who was also profiting off of black death; crimes that looked like murder but were treated more like fraud, and “white and black lives that existed almost side by side in small Southern towns but were worlds apart.”

How and why “The Reverend” never came to print is a separate story, believably related.

In Furious, Lee’s admirers will discover a new perspective on the reclusive author while also catching an enticing glimpse of the “lost” book that could or would have been a more modern sequel of To Kill a Mockingbird.

Casey Cep will be at Lemuria on Monday, May 13, at 5:00 p.m. to sign and discuss Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee. Lemuria has selected Furious Hours as its May 2019 selection for its First Editions Club for Nonfiction.

Margaret McMullan’s ‘Where the Angels Lived’ is a mesmerizing account of a family’s fractured history

By Guest Author

On May 6, 2019

In Biography/Memoir, History, War

By Ellen Ann Fentress. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (May 5)

Her grandfather, a Catholic University history professor, said he was the last of his accomplished Viennese family. He wasn’t, Mississippi author Margaret McMullan found out in an on-the-ground hunt that took her to Hungary, Austria, and Israel to learn the truth.

McMullan’s grandfather Friedrich Engel, who fled Vienna in 1939, was actually part of a renown—and at the time quite alive— Hungarian Jewish family. The Engel de Janosi clan had presided over their corner of Hungary as an economic and civic power, thanks to flourishing wood and coal enterprises that employed thousands. Emperor Franz-Joseph I of the Austro-Hungarian empire granted nobility to patriarch Adolf Engel and his descendants in 1886 in “recognition of economic virtues.” The family lived in palaces.

And yet. As Hungary and the citizens of the Engels’ town of Pecs, Hungary were overrun by Nazi forces in 1944, a century of prominence, good works and assumed assimilation weren’t enough for the Engels. The scion of the Pecs branch of the family—McMullan’s grandfather’s first cousin Richard Engel—died at the Mauthausen concentration camp after being rounded up along with other town Jews in March 1944. The story of Richard’s descent from respected, wealthy World War I war hero and city civic leader to being marched off as townspeople watched is the spellbinding story that McMullan tells in Where the Angels Lived: One Family’s Story of Exile, Loss and Return.

McMullan has crafted a mesmerizing account not solely of the downfall of her prominent cousin Richard Engel, but also of the shocking transformation of a Hungarian town. Interestingly, residents are now more eager to demonize the past Soviet occupation than to explore any town Nazi complicity in 1944.

McMullan’s has done more than tell this story masterfully. To relay an account of Richard Engel, it was up to her to uncover it. “What is not discovered, what is not saved is lost and forgotten,” she writes. “History is so often written and manipulated by winners. History can’t be written by the dead.”

McMullan came to her project when, out of curiosity, she typed in her family’s Engel de Janosi name at the Yad Vashem Holocaust archive in Jerusalem, when visiting with a writers’ group. The name Richard Engel de Janosi of Pecs, Hungary appeared. The archivist handed McMullan a form called the Page of Testimony. “No one has ever asked about this man, your relative, Richard,” the archivist tells her. “You are responsible now. You must remember him in order to honor him.”

Where the Angels Lived tracks McMullan’s steps from learning of the extensive family history hidden by her grandfather up through her eventual excavation of Richard Engel’s life. Her search benefited from extraordinary persistence and also the serendipity of meeting key people with information to share.

Of course, the memoir’s inevitable look at the gradual nature of totalitarianism’s growth resonates today, as both the U.S. and Hungary experience right-wing resurgences.

To research Richard Engel, McMullan applied to teach at the University of Pecs, which was seeking a lecturer in American literature through the Fulbright academic exchange program. She moves there for a university term in 2010 with her husband Patrick and their eighth-grade son James.

McMullan persists and builds a sense of her cousin Richard through her research. Even the holes in his portrait make him more universal, she reflects. “Maybe I can see Richard more accurately than I can see any other human being,” she writes. Her quest deepened her sense of her own Engels legacy as well. “I feel them at my side as I walk. All this time, they were never very far away.”

Ellen Ann Fentress is a writer, filmmaker and teacher in Jackson.

Margaret McMullan will appear at the Mississippi Book Festival August 17 as a participant in the “Memoir” panel at 1:30 p.m. at the Galloway Fellowship Center.

Author Q & A with Casey Cep

By Guest Author

On May 5, 2019

In Southern Fiction, Southern History, True Crime

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (May 5)

In her debut book, writer Casey Cep takes on the almost unbelievable 1970s crime story of an Alabama man who dubbed himself “The Reverend” and went on to commit a spree of murders so outrageous that he would meet a shocking end to his own life–and his offenses would bring Pulitzer Prize-winning author Harper Lee to a decision to write her own account of his crimes.

And although the celebrated author of To Kill a Mockingbird spent years dedicated to researching the story of “The Reverend” Willie Maxwell, Lee would never finish the book.

In Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee, Cep chronicles the dual stories of Maxwell’s crimes with Lee’s unsuccessful attempt to complete her own narrative of those events, despite her obvious gift for journalism.

A Maryland native, Cep is a graduate of Harvard University and studied as a Rhodes Scholar at the University of Oxford. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, and The New Republic, among others.

What drew you this unique story in Furious Hours and write it as not only a chronicle of “the Reverend” and his crimes, but an inner glimpse into the life of Harper Lee?

Casey Cep

I first learned of these murders while reporting on Lee’s novel Go Set a Watchman, so in some ways my book was always going to include her. The more I learned, though, the clearer it became that she wasn’t just a coda to the story, but an integral part of it. Her own reporting had been substantial, so I wanted to honor that, but I also thought her struggles provided a useful way of thinking about the aesthetic and ethical challenges that any journalist faces when trying to write about other people’s lives, especially with true crime.

Lee, who grew up known by her first name, Nelle, has said that she never felt like she fit in during her school years. Why was that?

Right, Nelle is Ellen backward, which her parents chose to honor her maternal grandmother. Stories about Lee as a young girl map onto her beloved heroine, so if you think about how Maycomb reacted to Scout Finch, then you get a sense of how Monroeville reacted to her: no one knew quite what to do with the clever tomboy who wore overalls and liked playing with the boys. Even when she went off to college, Lee stood out: quoting obscure English poets, wearing blue jeans, smoking, and swearing with gusto. From her letters, though, we know it was a bit of a two-way street: she was odd, but not an outcast; her distance from her peers was as much her own doing as theirs.

Lee longed to be a writer and envied her contemporaries whose personalities allowed them to blossom and share their talents, but there were times she found herself unable to write because she was between “perfectionism and despair.” How did this affect her writing?

I think perfectionism can make it hard to finish something and despair can make it hard to start, so if you are a writer who seesaws between the two, it can be paralyzing. Lee could spend an entire day on a single page but also impulsively toss out whole manuscripts, and because she valorized suffering as necessary for artistry, her struggles were self-reinforcing.

But she wasn’t like that when she wasn’t trying to write, and I found it moving when her friends would share memories of how charming she was, and how raucously funny she could be. Harper Lee would hold court with stories about her neighbors in Monroeville and her neighborhood in Manhattan that were like something out of Chaucer or Dickens, and you just wish she could’ve written them down as easily as she told them around the dinner table.

As Lee took an interest in the massive story of “the Reverend” and decided to write a book about it, it turned out that she was a keen investigative reporter, a task she obviously loved and was good at. It seems that she felt a sense of energy and pride as she worked on this crime story–but the book was never completed. Why?

You’re right that she was an incredible reporter. People she interviewed in Kansas while helping Truman Capote with In Cold Blood and people she interviewed in Alabama while working on “The Reverend” say she was the most interesting, inquisitive person they ever met.

She could put any source at ease, and she had the kind of patience it takes to get people to tell you their secrets. She was energized by the social aspects of reporting, but of course the hard part about writing a book is that at some point you have to actually write it, and she really struggled with that solitary work. She was also living in the shadow of her own bestselling, prize-winning masterpiece, so on top of everything else, she was facing sky-high expectations, from herself and from the world.

Your research for Furious Hours is impressive, as you give readers an inside look into decades-old crimes and their outcomes; as well as information about Lee that many have never heard. How did you approach the research and organization of this book?

Early on, I did what I always do when I’m starting something new: I read everything I could get my hands on. Not just about Harper Lee, but also voodoo, murder, the insanity defense, sharecropping, dams, revivals, insurance fraud, courthouses, and on and on and on. After that, I started tracking down leads about the original crimes, and then doing the same thing for Lee. I always knew the structure–the Reverend, the Lawyer, and the Writer–so I would just file what I found into folders and then organize the folders, and every day I’d hope to find some new document or convince someone new to talk with me. But at some point, you have to accept that some things are lost to time and some people just won’t talk with you, so you say a prayer, and start writing.

You say in the book that Lee “was so elusive that even her mysteries have mysteries.” Please explain.

I wrote that line when I was particularly struck by the incongruity between the tremendous interest in Lee and the paucity of information about her. She was always private, and she remained that way despite having written one of the world’s most popular novels. After years of reporting, and even getting to interview some of those who knew her best, there was still just so much more I wanted to know. I realize that everyone’s inner lives are somewhat mysterious–even those closest to us, like our siblings or our parents–so of course the mind and heart of an artist like Harper Lee will always remain a little elusive.

Casey Cep will at Lemuria on Monday, May 13, at 5:00 to sign copies of and discuss Furious Hours. Lemuria has selected Furious Hours its May 2019 selection for its First Editions Club for Nonfiction.

Wisdom of southern womanhood in Helen Ellis’s ‘Southern Lady Code’ sparkles with humor, savvy, sound advice

By Guest Author

On April 30, 2019

In Essays, Humor, Southern Culture

By Emily Gatlin. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (April 28)

The ways of Southern women are shining front and center recently, thanks to the recent success of Garden & Gun guides and most notably, Reese Witherspoon’s Whiskey in a Teacup, which takes everything our mamas taught us as we rolled our eyes at her, and packages it with glossy photos of unattainable wallpaper goals in a sleek pink coffee table book. Basically.

But as a whole, Southern women aren’t biscuits and sweet tea, and we’re certainly not M’Lynn Eatenton or Mrs. Gump, although we do tip our big floppy hats to Californian Sally Field for her performances and pseudo-passable accent attempts.

No, our blood even has its own special genetic code, forged by generations of literal sweating. The oppressive humidity we, as Southern women, curse every year like we aren’t expecting it, is its own Fountain of Youth. Our dewy glow springs eternal. We are witches who do not age. And when we do, Botox and fillers seem to magically do what they are supposed to.

We’re much more complex—always nice (even when we must call on our better angels to be so), and tiptoe a tightrope between being passive aggressive and genuine. For example: A woman at the grocery store is wearing bright pink lipstick, a strapless romper and flip flops with a French pedicure. Instead of saying, “She’s tacky,” we’d say my personal go-to, “Look what she likes!” Feel free to borrow that one.

This is what bestselling author and Alabama native Helen Ellis calls “Southern Lady Code,” which is also the name of her new book. It’s a technique by which, if you don’t have something nice to say, you say something not so nice in a nice way. It’s all about phrasing with us. Think of “investment pieces” you have in your wardrobe. That’s Southern Lady Code for “The Oscar De La Renta cocktail dress hanging in the back of your closet that costs more than a Henredon bed, but you’ll wear it for decades!” Which is half true—you’ll realize you’ve been clinging to a size 4 dress that you haven’t been able to wear since 1986 and give it to your daughter when you’re downsizing at 70. (Thanks, Mom!)

“Wheelhouse” is Southern Lady Code for “comfort zone.” If a friend, and even a close one who should know better, were to ask, “Would you like to go mud riding with us at Sardis Lake?” you would say, “No, thank you. That is not really in my wheelhouse. Would you like for me to pack you a picnic basket with cold salads and fruit?”

Fresh off the heels of American Housewife, Ellis’s brilliant collection of short stories, she takes a turn here at an essay collection, explaining Southern Lady Code to the masses, as she gives glimpses of her life as a Southerner who has called New York City home for the majority of her adult life. Bless her heart, she married into it.

Her deadpan humor is razor sharp and laugh out loud funny, a rare pearl in the canon of “Southern”-themed books and essays that too often read like tea that’s been steeped too long. She’s the guest at the dinner party you really don’t want to attend, but go anyway in hopes that you’ll be seated near her. (A Southern word of advice from Ellis about dinner parties: Be the first guest to arrive and the first to leave. Sound.)

Ellis’s essay collection covers everything from manners to monograms, a man who fakes his death at her eighth grade birthday party, and when she turned herself into a dominatrix version of Donna Reed to save her marriage.

Southern Lady Code is one you’re going to buy for yourself and share the joy with every woman you know.

Emily Gatlin is the Digital Editor of the Wonderlust travel website and the author of The Unknown Hendrix and 101 Greatest American Rock Songs and the Stories Behind Them. She lives in Oxford, Miss.

Author Q & A with Helen Ellis

By Guest Author

On April 21, 2019

In Humor, Southern Culture

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (April 21)

Alabama native and author Helen Ellis has lived in New York City for more than a quarter century, but says she still wears her accent “on her sleeve,” which explains why her newest book is titled Southern Lady Code.

The premise of the 23 true essays which capture as many hilarious and often poignant episodes she’s gotten herself into, is one simple rule: “If you don’t have something nice to say, you say something not so nice in a nice way.”

Ellis also authored Eating the Cheshire Cat and American Housewife. In addition to–and often instead of–calling herself a writer, she also proudly claims the title of “housewife.”

A serious poker plays who learned the game from her father as a child, Ellis competes on the national tournament circuit. She and her husband happily reside in Manhattan.

You grew up in Tuscaloosa and, at age 22, you left for New York City in hopes of becoming a writer. Tell me about the career twists that landed you in the role of housewife–which eventually, with the help of Twitter, led to your success as a writer.

Helen Ellis

It was 1992, and I–dressed in my Talbot’s turtleneck, ankle-length wool plaid skirt, and penny loafers–walked from publishing house to publishing house, dropping my resume at reception desks like calling cards. I had the hopes of being an editorial assistant, but no publishing house called me. I walked into Talbots and got a job on the spot.

Two years later, I got a job at a financial magazine with the hopes of being an editorial assistant. They hired me to drum up subscriptions. I met a young reporter, who drummed up my heart.

A year later, I got into the NYU creative writing program, temped as a secretary, and through that temp agency, landed a long-term job in the chairman’s office of Chanel. I worked four days a week and wrote three.

Scribner published my first book, Eating the Cheshire Cat, in 2000.

I married that young reporter, who became an editor, in 2001.

And then I wrote another book, and nobody published it. And then I wrote another book, and nobody published it. And then I quit my secretarial job to write full time, supported by my husband, wrote another book, and nobody published it. And then I quit writing, and nobody cared.

I settled into a happy life as a housewife. And when people asked me what I did, I didn’t say writer, I said, “Housewife.” The next question was always: “What do you do all day?” I started an anonymous twitter account called @WhatIDoAllDay.

I tweeted about housework and hosting parties and book clubs and the beauty of banality. And then I wrote a story about how a housewife cleans up murders. And then I wrote a story about a book club recruiting a new member with a sinister motive. And then I wrote about what a woman left to her own devices could ultimately do all day. I wrote what I knew. And, 16 years after my first novel, Doubleday published my short story collection, American Housewife. And three years after that, they’ve published Southern Lady Code. This time, the stories are all true.

Explain the phrase “Southern Lady Code,” and how it became the title of your newest book.

Southern Lady Code is: if you don’t have something nice to say, say something not so nice, in a nice way. Twenty-five years in Manhattan, I kept finding myself translating what I’d say to people. “She’s a character” means drunk. Or “He’s an archivist” means hoarder. Or “Bless her heart” means “What an idiot.”

I’ve been tweeting these translations for more than five years. I turned some of those tweets into a short story in “American Housewife.” My … true stories … are now this book. Each essay has a line of code. So, for example, in “Making a Marriage Magically Tidy” I write about how my husband fell in love with a “creative” woman. “Creative” is Southern Lady Code for slob.

The essays which make up Southern Lady Code are not only hilarious, but packed with meaning that makes us pause. Tell me how humor has been important in your life, and how it has become your signature writing style.

I come from a funny family. Some of the best times I’ve had have been at funerals, where relatives and friends try and outdo each other with the most outrageous memories of the deceased. With humor, you can ease pain. And with humor, you can be honest. It’s easier to get your point across when you make the person you’re pointing at laugh. Especially when you’re pointing at yourself.

Poker has been a passion of yours since childhood. Tell us about its role in your life.

There have been times when I wasn’t writing, but I’ve always played poker. Poker is a chance for me to really be myself. I can be nice, but I don’t have to play nice. I can be at the table, but I don’t have to entertain. I can confront bullies and make them back down. I can be brave. And when I lose, and I most certainly do lose, I know there’s always another game. And as with after my losses in writing, when I am lucky enough to win and get published, the success is all the sweeter.

I’ve interviewed many writers who, like you, have moved away from the South, yet no matter how much time passes, they still consider themselves to be Southerners. How would you explain that sentiment?

My roots run deep. And I wear my accent on my sleeve.

Helen Ellis will be at Lemuria on Wednesday, April 24, at 5:00 p.m. to sign and discuss Southern Lady Code.

‘On the Come Up’ cements Angie Thomas’s powerful voice

By Former Lemurians

On April 15, 2019

In African-American, OZ: Young Adult Fiction

By Andrew Hedglin. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (April 14)

Angie Thomas created a cultural phenomenon from Jackson to Hollywood two years ago with her debut, The Hate U Give, a young-adult novel about the aftermath of a police shooting of an unarmed black teenager. However, the book contains so much more than that, from the coming-of-age tale of protagonist Starr Carter, to its beautiful, real depictions of life in a black community.

Thomas returns to the fictional Garden Heights community of The Hate U Give in her follow-up novel, On the Come Up. In this book, 16-year-old Bri Jackson overcomes other people’s expectations for her to find her voice and use her talent for hip-hop to communicate her place in the world. From the “ring battles” in a local boxing gym to the SoundCloud-inspired accounts of the internet, Bri always goes forth boldly to remind the world that “when you say brilliant that you’re also saying Bri.”

Part of those expectations are from people in her community expecting her to carry the mantle of her father, the underground hip-hop legend Lawless, who was tragically murdered when Bri was a child. Bri is proud of her father’s legacy, but she has her own unique experiences to share.

The other side of the expectations is weighted with racial anxiety. Bri attends an arts-based magnet school in the posh Midtown neighborhood, bused there every day with her friends Sonny, anxious about grades and his online crush on a neighborhood boy, and Malik, her other best friend, her secret crush, and a budding political activist.

When Bri is stopped by security guards while smuggling contraband snacks into school, an ugly incident takes place in which she is forcefully pinned to the ground by security guards with a history of racial profiling. The cell phone videos of the incident have the power to reveal the truth of what happened, but they also have the power to distort. The image imparted partially depends on what the viewer wants, or expects, to see in the first place.

So it is with the lyrics to the song that Bri records in response to the incident, called “On the Come Up.” Students use the song in a school protest that goes wrong. A local DJ baits Bri in a radio interview, because Bri, while talented and thoughtful, is often prone to emotional, hot-headed responses. Bri laces her song with plenty of irony and nuance, yet those meanings are sometimes hard to convey in a song that’s also catchy enough to become a viral hit.

Meanwhile, Bri has to make important decisions, including her choice of manager. Should she stick with her beloved Aunt Pooh, a gangsta with a heart of gold and amateur to the business? Or should she side with Supreme, her father’s old shark-like manager with opaque motivations?

Bri is vulnerable to being sorely tempted to temper her image to achieve success. Self-expression is fine for what it’s worth, but real financial pressures await at home when her single mother is laid off from her job as a church secretary in the aftermath of the riots from The Hate U Give.

Her mother Jay and her brother Trey tell her not to worry, that she shouldn’t make long-term decisions based on immediate financial circumstances, but Trey has already put grad school on hold, and Jay has a history of not always being there for them, including a long stretch of drug addiction after their father and her husband was murdered in front of her.

In addition to this mesmerizing world-building, Thomas carries her spirited first-person narration into this new tale. Thomas does a very fine job balancing the personal and the political. Her style and solid writing will appeal not just to young fans who see themselves represented, but to older fans as well who wish to peek into the world a young, vibrant world populated with strong, three-dimensional black characters.

Andrew Hedglin is a bookseller at Lemuria Books, a graduate of Belhaven University, and a lifelong Jackson resident.

Signed copies of Angie Thomas’s books are available at Lemuria and on its web store.

Author Q & A with Shelby Harriel

By Guest Author

On April 14, 2019

In Civil War, Southern History, War, Women's Studies

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (April 14)

Shelby Harriel fell in love with history at a young age when she was shocked to find out that her own state had left its country in order to start a new one.

That curiosity eventually led to published research in newspapers, magazine, website, and blogs about the role of women in the Civil War.

Her new book, Behind the Rifle: Women Soldiers in Civil War Mississippi (University Press of Mississippi) encompasses much of that information, with an emphasis on women’s motivation to secretly join the military and fight, the hard work they put in alongside the men in their units, and the roads they paved for a future for women in the military.

By day, Harriel may be found at Pearl River Community College in Poplarville–teaching . . . math!

Please tell me about your long interest in history–and specifically, the Civil War and women who fought in the Civil War. Do you have an approximate number or percentage on the fighting force that were women?

Shelby Harriel

I became interested in the Civil War in elementary school when we were first introduced to the subject in our Mississippi History class. I was absolutely fascinated to learn that my state had left the United States and formed a whole new country. I had to find out more. Eventually, my studies led me to participate in reenacting, but I just couldn’t find my niche. As an athlete my entire life … sitting on the sidelines in a hoop skirt never appealed to me. I was more interested in learning about the experiences of the common soldier.

One day, (someone) remarked that there were women who served as soldiers. Suddenly, I found a whole new exciting realm to direct my interest and research. That was in the late 1990s when researchers began to take a fresh new look at women soldiers, and books were published. So, I had all this new exciting material to consume. The more I read, the more questions I had. This naturally led to me examining primary sources myself. Soon, I had accumulated a great deal of new research that I felt needed a broader audience.

We will never know how many women served as soldiers during the Civil War because they were hidden behind male disguises. Estimates range from the hundreds to the thousands. When you consider that millions of men fought, this number is insignificant. There weren’t that many of them.

What motivated women–some as young as 16–to risk the dangers and hardships of war by secretly enlisting in the military and fighting in the Civil War, disguised as men–and how did they get through the physical exams that allowed them to pass as men?

In some cases, it was the same motivational factors that led men to enlist that also prompted women to join the ranks: patriotism, adventure, and economic opportunities. There weren’t many well-paying, respectable jobs available for women then. But when they disguised themselves as men, they could double or triple their income in a variety of jobs previously closed to them. This afforded them a more independent lifestyle they would not have been able to enjoy in traditional feminine roles. Women also enlisted to avoid separation from male loved ones who went off to war. Other women joined to escape these male family members. Vengeance for a fallen loved one led some women to enlist–or attempt to.

Military regulations called for a soldier to strip for a medical exam upon entering the service. However, pressure to fill depleting ranks or incompetency resulted in cursory examinations where, in some cases, all surgeons did was to ensure that a recruit had a working trigger finger and two good teeth to tear the paper cartridge that held the ammunition. There are quite a few accounts of soldiers testifying that all they had to do was to show their hands and teeth. Some women even had men take the exam for them. So it was actually not terribly difficult for a woman to get past the examination. There are accounts, however, of thorough examining surgeons discovering women trying to sneak into the ranks.

You point out several times in your book Behind the Rifle that pursuing research into the stories and even the names of women who fought in the Civil War is difficult. Could you explain why this was, and do you plan to continue your efforts to identify these women and tell their stories?

At the time, women could not serve in the military, so if a woman wanted to join the army, she had to disguise herself as a man. She cut her hair, put on male clothing, and assumed a male alias. It was actually not that difficult because they did not have forms of identification, but it was a risky venture. Back then, it was not only illegal but also socially unacceptable for a woman to even wear pants. If caught, she served jail time and/or paid a fine. Clothing defined the genders, and anybody caught crossing those lines brought shame upon themselves and their families.

If these women were caught, they often told newspaper reporters wrong information about themselves–including their own feminine name–so this information would not get back home to their families. Sometimes, writers would afford women privacy by not reporting their name, or by assigning them another alias. There is also evidence that the military may have expunged the records of women soldiers. There are instances where male soldiers were court martialed when women soldiers were discovered in their units. Therefore, it is not surprising that many people didn’t want these stories told–making it excruciatingly difficult for those who do want to tell them.

Yes, I plan to continue researching women soldiers because I think there is more to learn. All it takes is the discovery of one soldier’s letter or diary entry, or one newspaper article to provide a missing piece of the puzzle-such as a correct name–that will either bring that woman’s story to fruition or debunk it.

I plan to include new research in a second book on women soldiers. It will have a broader focus that will encompass all women soldiers of the Civil War, not just those with Mississippi connections.

All in all, what would you say these women, who fought on both sides, contributed to the war effort–and why do we need to know about them?

As mentioned earlier, they were statistically irrelevant. Their presence on the battlefield didn’t change the course of an engagement or the war. They weren’t there promoting social change. They weren’t feminists fighting for women’s rights. These women were simply uncommon soldiers experiencing the common trials of war alongside men. They performed the same duties as men, endured the same hardships. They suffered debilitating wounds. They sacrificed their lives for causes that men shared. And we should honor them all the same. These women soldiers helped pave the way for women to serve in our current military.

Shelby Harriel will be at Lemuria on Saturday, May 4, at 2:00 p.m. to sign and discuss Behind the Rifle: Women Soldiers in Civil War Mississippi.

Author Q & A with Lovejoy Boteler

By Guest Author

On March 31, 2019

In Southern History, True Crime

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (March 31)

Fifty years have gone by since Lovejoy Boteler, then 18, was abducted from his family’s farm near Grenada by two escaped convicts serving time at Parchman Penitentiary for murder.

In his first book, Crooked Snake: The Life and Crimes of Albert Lepard (University Press of Mississippi), Boteler chronicles his decision two decades ago to get on the road and dig into the background of his kidnapper, in a quest to find some answers about what happened on that fateful June day.

His journey resulted in more than 70 personal interviews with family members, law officers and ex-convicts who ran with Lepard, along with unearthing numerous historical records that helped piece together the story of the short and violent life of this poverty-stricken, illiterate killer.

During his 14 years of incarceration for the murder of his 74-year-old great aunt in 1959, Lepard would escape six times. Born in 1934 in rural Attala County, his life would end with a bullet in his chest 40 years later, during a smalltime robbery.

Boteler went on to finish college, have a family, and enjoy some colorful career turns (including stints as a deck hand on the Mississippi River and a rodeo hand in Colorado), along with clerking for the Mississippi Legislature and teaching construction technology and instrumental music in public schools. Today he enjoys building custom furniture.

You were kidnapped in 1968 at age 18 by Albert Lepard, an escaped convict from Parchman Penitentiary, who was serving time for murder charges. After contemplating the shock of this life-changing event for more than three decades, you finally decided to go in search of information about your kidnapper. Why at this time did you feel like you were ready to tackle this project?

Lovejoy Boteler

Actually, my wife said I should–must–write the story of my kidnapping, if for no other reason than to pass it down to our children. She has heard me tell the story to other folks at least a hundred times! So, the ‘spark was struck’ and I began remembering the events of that strange day, first through the old scrapbook my mother made of the newspaper articles, photos and the mysterious silver dollars left by the convicts in the glove box of the truck. Then through some basic archival research, one thing turned up another, and another, and ultimately, I discovered the life and crimes of the notorious prison escape artist, Lepard.

In your search for information about Lepard’s background, you found that he had grown up poor and illiterate, with an alcoholic father, and a mother he loved dearly but who died when he was only 13. Did any of this affect your feelings about him, and if so, how?

Discovering that Lepard had committed a brutal torch-murder of his elderly aunt certainly did nothing to endear him to me. In fact, it gave me an overwhelming sense of disgust, revulsion. However, as I gained a gradual understanding of his childhood circumstances–grinding poverty, physical cruelty, and crushing hopelessness–I began to feel sort of ambivalent about him, and that made me think in depth about the complexity of human nature, and specifically that of forgiveness.

Lepard broke out of Parchman Penitentiary six times during his incarceration there from 1959 to 1974. He had been charged with the spectacularly brutal murder of Mary Young. Can you tell us briefly how that came about?

Lepard and his cousin committed the ghastly murder of their great-aunt in an instance of berserk greed and near insanity. Both were captured, tried, and sentenced to life in prison at Parchman Penitentiary, and while his cousin Joe did “good time” and was paroled after 10 years, Lepard just couldn’t make himself do the time. He bolted every chance he got, and abducted me on his fifth, next-to-last, escape from Parchman.

Crooked Snake: The Life and Crimes of Albert Lepard reveals that although Lepard had a violent nature, he lived by his own code of morality that ensured he would keep his word to someone, no matter what. What examples proved this side of his nature and what do you make of that?

The Lepard relatives that I interviewed always said that he was a ‘good boy’ when he was young and stayed close to home and hearth. Obviously, his life took a downward turn as an adult, but he displayed a loyalty to those he admired, or those who showed a certain respect for him. In a robbery, he would sometimes give an unlucky victim a few dollars back, if he felt they were the ‘under-dog.’ If he stole food or clothes from other poor folks, he might leave money for them to find later. He felt honor-bound to return from one of his escapes with weapons he had promised for certain Parchman inmates. I’ve wondered if he ever heard of Robin Hood, but thought probably not, given his illiteracy.

In what ways have you carried the fear of this assault with you through the years, and did researching and writing this book help you deal with those feelings?

Truthfully, I have not carried “fear” with me since the summer of 1968. Yes, the events of my kidnapping left indelible memories of that day, and I was shaken up for a while, but remember, I was an 18-year-old boy and the possibilities of life in the future soon brought back the youthful feeling of being invincible.

Talking to the 70 extraordinary people who make up the larger portion of the book–lawmen, ex-convicts, family members, and other victims just like me–helped me bring my own story full circle and allowed me a sense of closure on an eccentric slice of history.

Signed copies of Crooked Snakes: The Life and Crimes of Albert Lepard are still available at Lemuria’s online store.

Tag: Mississippi Book Festival 2019 (Page 3 of 7)

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Author Q & A with Casey Cep

Wisdom of southern womanhood in Helen Ellis’s ‘Southern Lady Code’ sparkles with humor, savvy, sound advice

Author Q & A with Helen Ellis

‘On the Come Up’ cements Angie Thomas’s powerful voice

Author Q & A with Shelby Harriel

Author Q & A with Lovejoy Boteler

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