The inaugural award of the Gilchrist Prize in Short Fiction goes to Alyce Miller for her story Missing.  It is included in Issue #3 of China Grove. Buy it now!

December 7th and 8th are always such a strange juxtaposition of emotions for me personally, on the seventh we remember the anniversarry of the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the United States entry into World War II, and then the eighth arrives and it is the anniversary of the assassination of John Lennon for the […]

China Grove: it is a name possessed of both mortal and mythic pretentions. On its face, China Grove, Mississippi harkens to a real locale, a ghost town at a south Mississippi crossroads, with only an old slave-built clapboard Methodist Church and its adjoining cemetery, sitting in the middle of a long leaf pine plantation, as […]

In 2014 two native Mississippians have been selected to recieve a Pulitzer Prize. Donna Tartt of Greenwood received the prize in fiction for her third novel “The Goldfinch” and Meridian native J. L. Adams was awarded the prize in music for his orchestral work “Become Ocean.” Congratulations to them both.

Here in this city, Surrounded by six million twittering birds. Or perhaps they are all ants? I’m sure some of them are aunts? It doesn’t matter. They are as foreign to us, As aliens from planet Zeta Mou. We are all that is. In this city, In this apartment, in the world. We stand shining, […]

I’m not going to start off with the pretense that this is an unbiased review. I have long thought Gilchrist to be one of the most talented writers of the second pantheon of Southern writers. She stood alongside the likes of Willie Morris, Walker Percy, Shelby Foote, and Barry Hannah and she more than held […]

Putting together the second issue is proving to be a more difficult task than I had anticipated, so many great submissions to choose from and only 250 pages to put them into. Will need to go to smaller fonts. If you’re already in congrats, if you’re out for sure you know that already too, if […]

If you need something to do this week head on up to Columbus, MS for the 25th Annual Welty Festival at Mississippi University for Women. Featured writers include China Grove alumni, Ellen Gilchrist, Michael Farris Smith, and Kendall Dunkelberg. Luke and I will both be up there, so come by and say, “Hi.” China Grove […]

Went down to see and interview Winston Groom, the author of Forrest Gump about his new book The Aviatiors and on all sorts of writerly, historic, and social subjects. In the next issue of China Grove. A great interview on tape, now all I have to do is write it. Updates to follow!

For those of you who read the creative non-fiction post earlier I have repaired it so it makes sense. No, I did not mean to differentiate poetry into Fiction and Non-fiction. However the distinction between fictional poets and non-fictional poets is of course still germane. So if there are any fictional poets who were anticipating […]