Short Takes

Lori Ostlund's short story "All Boy" (which appears in THE BIGNESS OF THE WORLD, and was originally published in the New England Review) has been selected by Richard Russo for Best American Short Stories 2010.

Interested in following news about the Flannery O'Connor Short Fiction Award? Check out our new Facebook fan page for the Flannerys, which will include updates about this year's competition (which opens for submissions April 1) as well as news on winning books and authors both past and present. (If you haven't yet visited the University of Georgia Press fan page, check that out too.)

The Cave Canem Poetry Prize opens for submissions March 15; Elizabeth Alexander is this year's judge, and the winning manuscript will be published by the University of Georgia Press in 2011. The prize honors an exceptional first book by an African American poet.

Oxford American's new Southern Food issue is now available, guest edited by John T. Edge, director of the Southern Foodways Alliance (and co-editor of the SOUTHERN FOODWAYS ALLIANCE COMMUNITY COOKBOOK, due out this fall). In their online companion to the issue, OxAm called out CORNBREAD NATION 5 as one of the new food-themed books they love.

The Savannah Herald covers the upcoming launch event for AFRICAN AMERICAN LIFE IN THE GEORGIA LOWCOUNTRY.

THE MANSION OF HAPPINESS by Robin Ekiss is a finalist for the Northern California Book Award for poetry, along with new books by Kim Addonizio, Brenda Hillman, D.A. Powell, and Joseph Stroud. Winners will be announced April 18.

Last Thursday's episode of Radio Literature on WORT Wisconsin features an interview with Dyana Furmansky about ROSALIE EDGE, HAWK OF MERCY.

The Alabama Review calls DIXIE EMPORIUM a "tour de force," noting "The essays are uniformly original and often surprising. The result is a book brimming with insights on the ways people have imagined and invented southern identities."

Now available -- new in paperback:
CLOSER TO TRUTH THAN ANY FACT
Jennifer Jensen Wallach
"Wallach's lucidly written essay offers much food for thought, both for scholars of history and life writing and for general readers trying to recapture the flavor of the past." —Journal of Interdisciplinary History

"Closer to the Truth Than Any Fact is a quietly but uncommonly ambitious work . . . . I look forward to periodically rereading it and wrestling with its conclusions."—Journal of American History

A FAMILIAR STRANGENESS
Stuart Burrows
Burrows analyzes the effect of the rapidly evolving technology of photography on American fiction, including Hawthorne, Henry James, Faulkner, and Hurston, challenging the notion of a clear break between realist and modernist traditions hinging on a differing relation to the camera.