Our fourth issue, and first one of the new year! Click the headline to get to the issue. In the issue window, the double-chevron icon brings up a toolbar so you can zoom in and out, download a PDF, etc. A few tips for reading it: The toolbar’s box icon fills your whole screen with a flipbook in spreads, which is easier to read on some screens. You can navigate back to the Table of Contents by clicking the link at the bottom of any page. There’s also a gallery button that will let you scroll through page thumbnails. If the flipbook doesn’t act right on your device or browser, we also have every article and story available as individual posts in the sidebar within a day or so of posting the issue. (That also helps people find content in web searches, use it for promotional stuff, etc.)
So about the issue itself…we are delighted to announce our fearless fiction editor John Dufresne has a new novel out this month: My Darling Boy, about a father’s quest to save his son from an opioid addiction in the gritty netherworld of Florida. He’s been getting some great reviews, like on page 28 (and one in some other publication called the New York Times or something).
Scott Archer Jones has been a big part of Real South/West behind the scenes and at the Taos workshops, and his novel excerpt “L.A. versus La.” appeared in our May/June issue. So we are also proud to announce he also has a new novel coming out this month: The Moth. You can read more about it on our Recommended New Books page.
We haven’t been planning themes for issues, but they’ve had an odd way of coalescing anyway. This time around, we lucked into a wonderful photo essay on Big Bend National Park, courtesy of Carl Deal and Diana Finlay Hendricks. That coincided rather serendipitously with a poem Peter Mladinic submitted about Big Bend and Neil Crabtree’s short story, “Not Dead Yet in Texas” (which could be my mantra most days). And I just so happened to be reading Giant Love, the brand new book by Edna Ferber’s grand-niece. It’s a fascinating dive behind the scenes into how her aunt’s classic novel Giant (and the movie of the same name) came to be such an iconic portrayal of oil-gushing West Texas.
We are also proud to offer up five other new pieces of great grit lit fiction: Gary Carter with “Hard Times for a Haggard Heart.” Susan Isaak Lolis with “Burn,” and Hector Duarte, Jr. with “Hoy No.” John Dufresne riffs on plot themes and definitions in “As I Lie Plotting.” And we have a short play this time, Joyce Newman Scott’s one-act, Turnpike Trauma. And on top of all that are poems from Gaylord Brewer, Jo Angela Edwins, Michael Hettich, and Jesse Millner.
Then we wrap things up with some tasty Mardi Gras recipes from Remy Martin, the young Louisiana chef featured in our September issue.
Check it out!