Fiction

Fiction / General News / Press Releases — 1 Comment
09
Apr 13

Cary Holladay Publishes Sixth Book of Fiction

“A book of short stories is not usually what you would call a page turner, but Cary Holladay’s Horse People may be an exception. You gallop along breathlessly—not because you are aiming for the finish line, but because the writing is so wonderful you keep going, enthralled, never wanting this gorgeous prose to end.” —Bobbie Ann Mason, author of Shiloh and The Girl in the Blue Beret

Set in the pastoral horse country of Rapidan, Virginia, the stories in Cary Holladay’s Horse People chronicle the lives of the Fenton family through the Civil War, the Great Depression, and World War II. At the center of these interconnected stories is Nelle, a northern debutante who marries into the Fenton family and establishes herself as their stern and combative matriarch.

Nelle’s arrival in Virginia sets up the familial conflict: The Fentons, though well-respected millers and horse-breeders, remain yeoman farmers, whereas Nelle grew up in a wealthy, urban environment. Her high-brow sensibility creates animosity within her new family and fosters resentment among the rural poor. Headstrong and contentious, Nelle relies on an almost supernatural connection with horses to escape the hostility that surrounds her. As Nelle ages and experiences the sweeping cultural changes and hardships of early twentieth-century America, she comes to symbolize everything she once challenged in this community. Through these multi-generational stories, Holladay draws on the folklore and history of her native Virginia and examines the cultural, racial, gender, and economic tensions that pervaded the entire nation.

Cary Holladay is the author of two novels and three story collections. Her writing has appeared in New Stories from the South, The Oxford American, The Southern Review, Glimmer Train, and Tin House. She has received fellowships from the Tennessee Arts Commission, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and the NEA. She and her husband, writer John Bensko, teach at the University of Memphis.

February 18, 2013
200 pages, 5.5 x 8.5
ISBN 978-0-8071-5094-8
Paper $23.00

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16
Oct 12

New Novel from Pam Durban Recovers Story of Brutal Jim Crow-Era Lynching

In The Tree of Forgetfulness, Pam Durban, winner of the Lillian Smith Book Award, continues her exploration of southern history and memory. This mesmerizing and disquieting novel recovers the largely untold story of a brutal Jim Crow–era triple lynching in Aiken County, South Carolina. Through the interweaving of several characters’ voices, Durban produces a complex narrative in which each section reveals a different facet of the event. The Tree of Forgetfulness resurrects a troubled past and explores the individual and collective loyalties that led a community to choose silence over justice.

Pam Durban is the author of All Set About with Fever Trees, The Laughing Place, and So Far Back. Her stories and essays have been widely published, and her short story “Soon” was included in The Best American Short Stories of the Century. She is Doris Betts Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing at the University of North Carolina.

Praise for Pam Durban

“Pam Durban renders her characters and their world with such rich and beautiful complexity that the only fair response to someone asking what it’s about is to press the book into their hands and insist they read it.”—Tommy Hays, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“Haunting and irresistible . . . Durban has written a splendid, engrossing, and, above all, deeply thoughtful novel that will linger in readers’ minds long after they close its cover.”— Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Oxford American

“Durban’s carefully managed cast of characters—antebellum aristocrats, slave families and their descendants in the modern South—are drawn with subtle grace, producing a narrative of compelling intensity.”—Publishers Weekly

October 12, 2012
200 pages, 5 1/2 x 8 1/2
978-0-8071-4972-0
Paper $23.00, ebook available
Fiction

Fiction / Literary Studies / Louisiana Studies / Poetry / Reviews — No Comments
29
Apr 08

The News & Observer spotlights Yellow Shoe Fiction

The News & Observer (Raleigh, NC) recently ran a great feature on LSU Press and its Yellow Shoe Fiction series.  Click here to read the full article.

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25
Apr 08

Telegraph lists “Confederacy” in 50 Best Cult Books

The LSU Press Pulitzer Prize winning novel, A Confederacy of Dunces was named as one of the 50 Best Cult Books by British newspaper, Telegraph.  Click here to view the entire list.

Fiction / Literary Studies — Comments Off
29
Mar 07

Oprah Book Club Author McCarthy Explored in New Book

This week, Oprah chose Cormac McCarthy’s The Road for her immensely popular book club. Check out CNN’s recent feature for the scoop. 080713175x_2

Gary M. Ciuba, professor of English at Kent State University, has recently published a groundbreaking study of McCarthy and several other celebrated southern authors titled Desire, Violence, and Divinity in Modern Southern Fiction: Katherine Anne Porter, Flannery O’Connor, Cormac McCarthy, Walker Percy. In his book, Ciuba explores the roots of violence in southern culture by analyzing protagonist Lester Ballard in McCarthy’s Child of God. Desire, Violence, and Divinity would make the perfect compendium piece for those readers interested in delving deeper into the raw emotions that permeate McCarthy’s fiction.

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30
Jan 07

Third Book in Yellow Shoe Fiction Series Selected

Ysflogosm The Animal Girl: Stories, by John Fulton, has been selected as the third title in LSU Press’s Yellow Shoe Fiction Series. To be published this fall, the stories in The Animal Girl explore the complexity of both mid-life romance and adolescent rage with humor and insight. While the characters in these stories are overwhelmed by grief, they are also forced to accept loss when confronted with the need and desire to connect with those around them. Fulton’s rich and unobtrusive language is just right for conveying the emotional and narrative complexities of these stories.

Yellow Shoe Fiction is an original-fiction series edited by Michael Griffith, author of the novel Spikes and the short-fiction collection Bibliophilia. Griffith was also an editor at the Southern Review literary quarterly for more than a decade and now teaches creative writing at the University of Cincinnati. Regarding the aims of the Yellow Shoe Fiction series, Griffith has said: "I’ll be looking first and foremost for literary excellence, especially for good manuscripts that have fallen through the cracks at the big commercial presses. In today’s publishing world, despite the proliferation of fiction titles in recent years, those cracks seem like yawning crevasses, and I’m confident that we’ll be able to find worthy novels and story collections—whether by new writers on the way to big careers or by critically acclaimed veterans frustrated by New York’s endless hunger for youth and novelty." The first two books in the series are If the Sky Falls: Stories by Nicholas Montemarano and Uke Rivers Delivers: Stories by R. T. Smith.

John Fulton is the author of two books of fiction: Retribution, which won the Southern Review Short Fiction Award and the novel More Than Enough, which was a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers selection. He lives with his wife and baby daughter in Boston.