Hello all! After a little less than a week of lurking in the shadows, I figured it was probably about time that I introduced myself. So, here we go! My name is Emily, and I’m the Southern Lit Alliance’s newest summer intern. I’m a recent graduate of the University of the South with a major in English, and I’ll be hanging around for the next nine weeks, doing everything from entering membership data to keeping So Lit’s social media pages up-to-date to writing blog posts like this one. I’m so excited for the opportunity to work with So Lit! Believe it or not, the Southern Lit Alliance is an organization that is very near and dear to my heart. Growing up on Signal Mountain, I was constantly sur
Verbie and Hugh Prevost Award Winner for Outstanding Poetry from the Young Southern Student Writers Contest Maggie Thal, Grade 11 Signal Mountain High School Everything She always had mud on her boots And leaves in her hair And dirt up under her fingernails. But she did not mind because the mud on her boots was where she had been And what she had done, And the leaves in her hair were flowers from lying in fields In between a dream and a thought, And the dirt up under her fingernails Was just how far into the story she had managed to dig herself. Her freckles were all the discoveries she had made, And all the places that she went, Gathering mud on her boots. Her deep eyes were the reflection
A Question of Mercy is Elizabeth Cox’s fifth novel and a rare look at mental-health treatment in 1950’s America. Jess Booker, the novel’s heroine develops a close emotional link and protective feelings for her mentally challenged stepbrother, Adam Finney. When he faces being institutionalized and a possible lobotomy, Jess and Adam both are desperate to spare him the terrible fate. But when Adam is found dead in the French Broad River of rural North Carolina, Jess in fear runs away from home and the questioning of the authorities. Her odyssey across four states leads to life and death moral choices. She treks through woods and hitchhikes her way to a boarding house in tiny Lula, Alabama
