We are sad to hear that Mary Ward Brown passed away on Friday at the age of 95. Sarah Mahan of the Selma Times-Journal writes:

Nichols described Brown as a “gentle and wonderful person,” who loved reading and literature.

“She would enter a room quietly but everyone would notice her,” Nichols said. “When you sit with her, she would just draw you in, much in the same way you become drawn to her stories.”

Brown leaves behind not only family and friends, but a celebrated literary legacy. Read the full article here.

Mary Ward Brown’s collection of short stories Tongues of Flame won the Penn/Hemingway Award for Fiction. She last signed at Lemuria in August of 2009 (pictured above with John Evans) for the publication of her memoir Fanning the Spark. Brown writes:

“When I was writing the stories in Tongues of Flame, nobody, including me, thought that what I wrote would ever be worth the effort, so I was thought to be deluded and was generally let alone. When “The Amaryllis” was published in McCall’s and a newspaper reporter tried to find me, he was told that I was something of a recluse. It hurt my feelings, because I’ve never wanted to shut myself away from the people or the life around me. But to write, one does have to somehow be shut away. In bed every night, I think of people I haven’t stayed in touch with, letters and emails I haven’t answered, opportunities I’ve let go by, even flowers I haven’t put on the graves of my family.”

Mary Ward Brown is just the kind of person–even if you know her just a little–who you wish could stay with us forever. At Lemuria, we’ll continue to share her beautiful writing with others.

It’s a grim title, but Murderland it was, a term coined by a New York reporter who had come to expose the story of the two feuding families on the West Virginia and Kentucky boarder. We have long been enamored with the story of the Hatfields and McCoys- our very own fair Verona tragedy, only more backwoods and less…well, fair. Recently the History Channel undertook this infamous generation-spanning inter-family squall in the form of a miniseries and companion documentary. Now Dean King has joined the ranks of committed researchers who have decided to sink their teeth into very often two-sided tale with his new book The Fued: The Hadfields & McCoys, the True Story.

The Fued reads beautifully, like fiction even, which isn’t a hard thing to believe considering that the whole story seems too bad to be true. King follows the two families from the first shot, to the rumored romance between Johnse Hatfield and Roseanne McCoy, all the way to the official peace treaty signed by Reo Hatfield and Bo and Ron McCoy in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. King experienced first hand how tense the situation is even today, as he wrote in the author’s note:

“On my first trip, in the summer of 2009, with the help of two forest rangers and my daughter Hazel, I bushwacked down to the mouth of Thacker Creek on the Tug Fork of the Big Sandy River to see the place where Jeff McCoy had been shot and killed in 1886. We had not been there fifteen minutes when some locals let it be known in a feud-worthy fashion that they did not appreciate my snooping around…gunshots sprayed the river surface near us– making me, as far as I know the second chronicler of the feud (Creelman being the first, in 1888) to be warned off with rifle fire while researching the story.”

This is the best kind of “fly on the wall” book, and King has researched so thoroughly that it transcends dry history text and is transformed into a real story. In some cases, truth really is stranger than fiction, and maybe that’s why we love this story so much. The tragedy, passion, and longevity of this feud is irresistible to us- and I imagine it always will be.

One good thing usually leads to another, and World Book Night led me to Roderick Red of Jackson Voices. The purpose of Jackson Voices is to put “the power of storytelling in the hands of Jackson residents with the goal of elevating voices not often heard, particularly within the African-American community.”

Roderick Red is one of ten Jackson correspondents and he found out about Sheila O’Flaherty, a regular on JATRAN, who was giving away books for World Book Night on April 23rd. As you’ll hear in the video, I met Sheila through World Book Night a couple of years ago and have always admired her love of reading and her desire to share it with others.

See Roderick’s full post here: Booklover Shares Reading with Fellow Bus Riders: A Video

Jackson Voices is a project of The Clarion Ledger and The Maynard Institute.

If you haven’t participated in World Book Night before, you can sign up for their newsletter and be ready to sign up to be a World Book Night giver for 2014. SIGN UP HERE.

James Franco’s film adaptation of William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying will premier at the Cannes Film Festival on May 20. I wonder if we will ever be able to see it in Jackson . . .

Check out the trailer and see what you think!

The film tells the story of the death of Addie Bundren (Beth Grant) and her family’s quest to honor her wish to be buried in the nearby town of Jefferson.

Franco wrote, directed and stars in the film as Darl Bundren, Addie’s second oldest son, and “True Blood” star Jim Parrack as Cash Bundren, Addie’s eldest son. Additional members of the cast include Richard Jenkins, Danny McBride, Logan Marshall-Green, Ahna O’Reilly and Tim Blake Nelson.

Bill Cheng definitely knows how to write a first novel that will get everybody talking. How does a native New Yorker who has never set foot in Mississippi capture the lives of black and white on the Mississippi Delta during the flood of 27 and beyond?

Well, that was mine and many other people’s question as well.  Before you know it, Julie Bosman of The New York Times was calling Lemuria and Square Books to get the story on Southern Cross the Dog. Here is the link to the full article online, appearing in print in the May 9th issue of The New York Times. The article is worth your time to read. Bosman gives the inside story of how Cheng’s love of the blues translated into a novel that has won the approval of Bill Ferris and Edward P. Jones.

And yes, I am still reading Southern Cross the Dog and hope to finish it this weekend. It’s been a great read and I can’t wait to finish it.

Bill Cheng will be signing and reading at Lemuria at 5:00 and 5:30 on Monday, May 20th.

Cheng will also be at The Library Lounge at the Fairview Inn at 6:30 on May 20th to read and sign. If you haven’t been to the Lounge yet–it’s wonderful. A cozy bar with lots of books and Lemuria will be on hand to sell Southern Cross the Dog.