Rusty Barnes's Blog: Fried Chicken and Coffee, page 43

New Literary E-Zine: Southern Grit

I've corresponded with editor Kevin Baggett a bit, and I thought I'd give him a plug here. I've already begun reading through the stories in Issue I and it looks like it'll be a good addition to the web. And anybody who likes Larry Brown is OK in my book.

The first issue includes Mike Hampton, M. Alexander [...:]

Remembering Deliverance

It's clear James Dickey mythologized and often outright lied about the circumstances of his life now, and what's been lost along with his critical reputation is the work, the work, my god the work. Six years of formal education and I was never assigned a Dickey poem, which is a tragedy. A great poet (no [...:]

Cape Breton Road by D.R. MacDonald

I'm taking a break from a book review to write about another book. Funny, eh?

D.R MacDonald is a writer I don't hear much about, and that's too bad. His novel Cape Breton Road is one I re-read frequently, for the lush descriptions and lean prose, yes, but more for the descriptions of Cape Breton and [...:]

Himself, Guilty, fiction by Jeff Crook

At the wake he realized he had never seen her move, never even saw her get up to go to the bathroom. He had only ever encountered her already enthroned, frightful dewlaps unfolding as she reached out and drew him into the goblin luxuriance of her enormous bosom. Her dry lips forcing a horrified kiss. [...:]

Memories of a Joplin Bum, by Helen Losse

I'm really a person who keeps pretty much to myself, but you'd probably know me as the guy you see all over town pushin' the old wooden cart. You'd call me a bum, but I'll get to that later. I have a life, though you might not think it's much of one—not by [...:]

Still Journal's Contest Deadline Approaching–Enter Now

Good luck to those of you who qualify to enter. Judges include Ann Pancake, Maurice Manning, and Janisse Ray. Be sure to visit the site and follow the guidelines.

Contest Guidelines

Still: The Journal announces the first annual Still Writing Contests in Fiction, Poetry, and Nonfiction.  Contest entries should follow our normal submission guidelines, which state that "we [...:]

Birds of Winter, fiction by James Alan Gill

"Last night's spangles and yesterday's pearls are the bright morning stars of the barroom girls."

–Gillian Welch, Barroom Girls

Little girls don't dream of growing up to become barmaids, and Lori Thompson was no different, but now she stands behind the bar at The Bluff, staring into a daydream of neon-lit smoke, [...:]

Nearly 1500 Infractions Reported in PA Gas Wells

Speaks for itself, no?

Report: Firms commit 1,500 infractions in Pa. in 30 months

STEVE MOCARSKY smocarsky@timesleader.com

Marcellus Shale gas drilling companies have racked up nearly 1,500 environmental violations in Pennsylvania in the last two and a half years, according to a report released on Monday.

The Pennsylvania Land Trust Association reviewed environmental violations accrued by natural gas drillers [...:]

Remodeling, fiction by Sheldon Compton

A weak rain fell and settled across Route 6 like a worn out bed sheet so that oil and grease left from the occasional car and several short-bed coal trucks rose back to the surface of the blacktop. The road would stay slick with the reborn oil until the rain picked up and washed [...:]

Leviathan: Monster of the Deep, fiction by Michael Gills

This was the Dixie circuit–it was nothing for a Peterbilt to pull off the interstate with a six hundred pound rat, two-headed goats or a Donkey Woman nursing horsey-faced twins. Leviathan was the first whale me or Jimmy'd ever seen, coated in a slick layer of cottage cheese looking stuff. It just lay there. No posters of living [...:]