Sheri Joseph was my dissertation advisor, so we have a special kind of friendship. Fortunately, it’s no feat to genuinely love her writing for itself, and not because I feel obligated to! Sheri’s books and the characters within them have touched me since I was her student eleven(!) years ago, when I read Bear Me…

Josh Russell is one of my favorite writers. His stories and novels are funny, sad, and deeply human. His sentences are deceptively easy to read. Try reading them out loud and hear their music. Here is a story of a college hookup that, like all such things, usually mean more than they do to at…

Like the mythological Greek figure to whom the title of this story alludes, Anthony Grooms’s character here hovers above the ruins of our most famous city after the eco-disaster that brought the deluge. Certainly more Atlantans ought to think about all the driving they do. Unfortunately, while this story’s science fiction, my understanding of the…

This strange incantation reads only loosely as narrative, but in that we get the sense of this woman’s life lived and now, in her afterlife, she drifts, imagining her past in a body from her past, though she remembers that body’s future. Let that sink in for a minute. Ben Spivey always coming through with…

Here’s a short but strange piece from Blake Butler, a writer who’s been called the 21st century William Burroughs. Blake’s imagery is always somewhat nightmarish, and here he delivers with this weird hairless and silent kid cooped up behind a burial plot. + There’s a boy in a cage in the sand fields behind where…

This sad story by Susan Rebecca White chronicles most of a woman’s adult life. That’s quite a feat in this short space. The harsh realities of love lost and life continuing on despite that are displayed here with terrible sorrow, but also with hope. + You remember looking down at Cam’s soft brown eyes while…

What’s weird about Atlanta is that sometimes you forget you’re in the South. Most whom I know aren’t from here, and it’s not all that often I run across a thick Southern accent, and some Bible-thumping. But there are reminders everywhere, like the hoards of church busses I find parked at the Botanical Garden when…

Here’s a story by Creative Loafing Atlanta editor and columnist, Wyatt Williams. I’ve known Wyatt for a while, but am mostly familiar with his nonfiction. So this was refreshing and impressive: this cool story about a book critic writ large, or small, depending on how you look at things. + The book critic had some…

Here’s a story about a life-long love tinged with madness. There’s an epistolary female Hannibal Lecter lurking inside this. + 1875 You must know by now that I am wholly unwell. Mother told you of my state. You know it is more than the leg I lost. God bless you. God bless her. God bless…

Chris Bundy and I were in our grad program at GSU together, so I’ve known him for about ten years. Our friendship in school passed over into our working-as-writers lives, as Chris and I, along our third, Man Martin (who will also be featured here this month) formed our writing group. We read drafts of…

Here’s a Southern Yarn from Collin Kelley who, I learned by talking with him over email, worked on this story with Georgia novelist Ferol Sams whose granddaughter was once one of my students. Georgia’s small like that. + Standing in the checkout line at the A&P, I noticed Fanny Ballard was a couple of customers…

Here’s a short from Lydia Ship, managing editor of The Chattahoochee Review. Lydia and I also went to school together, so I’ve been reading her stories for a long time. She just keeps getting to be a better and better writer. I’m actually astonished that she hasn’t published a book yet, but one must be…