Belles' Letters: Contemporary Fiction by Alabama Women

by Joe Taylor (Editor)

Gumbo in Mobile, Dreamland ribs in Tuscaloosa, nouveau cuisine in Birmingham, Chris's hot dogs in Montgomery, and pond-raised catfish fried in the Black Belt - as varied as that menu, so are the stories and excerpts in this collection by women writers from Alabama. Comedy, allegory, folklore are here. Subjects varying from childhood initiation, to spousal abuse, to race relations, to AIDS are here. Plots involving murder, romance, necrophilia, Shirley Temple dolls, kinfolk, and ghostly appearances are here. In brief, when you finish this collection your concept of Alabama writers, as well as your concept of women writers, will expand.

184 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1999

About the author

I’ve had stories published in over 100 literary magazines. Pineapple, A Comic Novel in Verse, was published by Sagging Meniscus Press, as was Back to the Wine Jug, another novel in verse. NewSouth Books published The Theoretics of Love. Sagging Meniscus also published a story collection of mine, entitled Ghostly Demarcations. A previous novel of mine, Oldcat & Ms. Puss: A Book of Days for You and Me, was published several years ago by the now defunct Black Belt Press, and it was reviewed in Publishers Weekly. I have three story collections published, and I’ve edited several anthologies, notably, Belles’ Letters: Contemporary Fiction by Alabama Women and Tartts One through Five. I recently published a novel with the imposing title, Let There Be Lite, OR, How I Came To Know and Love Godel’s Incompleteness Proof. I’ve been the director of Livingston Press . . . forever.

Reviews

[Cheryl · Rating 2 out of 5]

Murders. Suicides. Depression. Desertion. Mental Illness. And all the stories with kids in them seemed to be creepy or bitter or hopeless. I was just happy to finish this book. The only story I would have been interesting in reading more of (which stated it was an excerpt of Tattoo by Janet Mauney) lead to a dead end. Apparently, that book was never published. I have no idea how to rate this book. The writing was very good--but the stories...too dark.