Tag: Virginia
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#4 – Razorblade Tears by S.A. Cosby – 2022 Best Reads
This is the first crime thriller I’ve ever put in the Top Ten, but I got hooked on S.A. Cosby this year. His books are crackling page-turners filled with similes and energy. And, o yes, violence. There’s a lot of that, too. Cosby attracted my attention because he’s a Virginia native and aspires to the…
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Glorious Excess: S.A. Cosby and the Future of Southern Fiction
S.A. Cosby knows that he’s prone to excess. He told The Guardian as much in an interview last year: “I write long sentences. I like similes (maybe too much, according to some reviewers). I like to write esoterically. I pontificate and wax poetic in the middle of gunfights. That’s my style.” –S.A. Cosby In his…
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Pulling Back the Veil in the Vale of Opioids: Beth Macy’s Dopesick
Three months into our current pandemic we know the scenario. “Epidemics unfold ‘like a vector phenomenon, where you have one individual who seeds that community and then the spread begins.’”(127) Dr. Anna Lembke could have been talking about COVID-19, but the Stanford specialist in addiction medicine was talking about opioids and ace Virginia reporter Beth…
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#5–A Shout in the Ruins: Heartlands Best Reads of 2019
Kevin Powers’ historical novel, A Shout in the Ruins, had me from the first paragraph. It’s not just that he told a gripping and heart-filled novel of my home state, Virginia, in the Civil War and mid-20th century eras. It’s also that Powers is an elemental writer who uses words to explosive effect, touching on the…
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There is Still a ‘There’ There: The Atopian Dreams of Suzannah Lessard
This review by Heartlands editor Alex Joyner originally appeared in the Eastertide 2019 print edition of the Englewood Review of Books (now available) and is republished with permission. It’s quaint to live in a place like Parksley. Though the name refers to the original owner from whom the land for the town was bought, one Benjamin Parks, it…
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Another Southern Writer Finds Love in the Ruins: A Review of Kevin Powers’ Latest
The opening paragraph of Kevin Powers’ new novel, A Shout in the Ruins, is perhaps the finest beginning to a book I’ve read since Flannery O’Conner blew open the universe in the first paragraph of The Violent Bear It Away. Like that gem, Powers’ opener is all mood and tantalizing hooks that spark a thousand…
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Race, Virginia, and Jesus’ Circle of Favor
It has been a disturbing week in Virginia government. Once again, we are struggling with how we address questions of race and racism. This time Virginia Governor Ralph Northam and Attorney General Mark Herring are both confronted with incidents from their past involving appearances in blackface, a remnant of minstrel shows where the entertainment came…
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God is in the Countryside (and Country Churches)
Maybe it’s because I’m getting ready to do a workshop on storytelling this weekend, but I’ve been thinking about the parables of Jesus. The Nazarene had a way of incorporating the stuff of the world around him into his messages. Farmers and seeds, shepherds and sheep, tenants and landowners—these were things Jesus’ listeners knew about.…
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Why Don’t Country People Just Get Out? – Episode 3
It’s happened again. Writers in The New York Times are once again wondering aloud if country people shouldn’t just give up and move to the city to deal with problems of economic insecurity. Which means, it’s time for another episode of “Why Don’t Country People Just Get Out?” In an article titled “The Hard Truth…
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The Writing Life–It Came for Me: Poetry
On visiting Hunterdale with kin long after Grandma died: It was pathetic to look at– Grandma’s glorious garden overgrown with grass. Her long back yard littered with automotive and boat wrecks. The scuppernong vines half the size they were back when. Still, amidst the mess, I could make out the spot where I first knew…
Heartlands 