Category: Books & Magazines

Seeking submissions of… (books)

Posted on by Foster Dickson in 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Books & Magazines

level:deepsouth is open to contributions about the books that were meaningful to GenXers in the Deep South, and there are three different ways to contribute.

First, if the book is about life in the Deep South in the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s and all you really want to do is send the title and the author’s name, you can submit it for the lists. This offer is definitely open to writers and publishers who want their titles included.

Second, if the book is about life in the Deep South in the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s and you want to write about it, you could write a review and submit that.

Third, if the books isn’t about life in the Deep South in the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s but you want to write about it, you could write something about what the book is and why it was meaningful to you growing up as a GenXer in the Deep South, then submit that for the in print section. For that matter, the in print section of level:deepsouth is also open to works about the favorite bookstores, bookshelves, libraries, or newsstands where we got our books.

 

tidbits, fragments, and ephemera 25

Posted on by Foster Dickson in 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Alabama, Books & Magazines, Deep South, Mississippi, South Carolina, Youth

tidbits, fragments, and ephemera is a usually weekly but not always, sometimes substantial but not making any promises glimpse at some information and news related to Generation X in the Deep South.

Former South Carolina governor and Trump UN ambassador Nikki Haley born, 1972

Fifty years ago this month, “Nimrata Nikki Randhawa Haley, better known as Nikki Haley, was born on January 20, 1972, in Bamberg, South Carolina, to Sikh immigrants from Punjab, India. She attended local schools and graduated from Clemson University with a Bachelor of Science degree in accounting.” Haley was elected governor of South Carolina in 2011. She was the state’s first female governor and the nation’s second Indian-American governor, after Louisiana’s Bobby Jindal.

“Cold Sunday” in the South, 1982

Forty years ago this week, on January 17, an unusually bitter cold front came down from Canada and made it all the way to the Gulf. That day, Jackson, Mississippi went down to -5° F, and Birmingham, Alabama went to -2° F.

The Alabama Forum newspaper, 1977 – 2002

description: “The Alabama Forum, published in Birmingham from 1977 to 2002 under editor June Holloway, was one of the longest-running news sources for the LBGTQ community in the state of Alabama. This digital collection consists of 245 issues, published from 1981 to 2002 and totaling more than 4,500 pages. [ . . . ] It was a repository of local and national news related to contemporary LGBTQ issues and an important venue for publicizing events of interest to the community. It also gave space to advertisers and, especially early on, provided a much-needed directory of friendly organizations and businesses. The publication enabled readers to share their thoughts and experiences in guest editorials, letters to the editor, and creative pieces, and to make connections via classified and personal ads.”

level:deepsouth is an online anthology about growing up Generation X in the Deep South during the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s. The anthology is open to submissions of creative nonfiction (essays, memoirs, and reviews) and images (photos and flyers), as well as to contributions for the lists.

the recent death of Anne Rice

Posted on by Foster Dickson in 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Books & Magazines, Deep South, Louisiana

For many GenXers, Anne Rice’s books were a staple of the reading diet. Perhaps the most well-known, Interview with a Vampire was published in 1976, but became even more popular when coupled with 1985’s The Vampire Lestat. It didn’t hurt any that the 1994 film adaptation of Interview with a Vampire starred Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise, who were at the peak of their fame. It also didn’t hurt that those mass market paperback reprints, like the copy seen here, were accessible and affordable. (Of course, the 2002 adaptation of 1988’s Queen of the Damned garnered a little more attention to the series, but it came at the end of The Vampire Chronicles’ heyday.)

Anne Rice was born in 1941 in New Orleans and was heavily identified with her hometown. She had left New Orleans in 2004 and moved to California, where she died on December 11, 2021.

During the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s, Rice wrote and published the quite a few novels, including Tale of the Body Thief (1992), Memnoch the Devil (1995), and The Vampire Armand (1998) in the Vampire Chronicles series, and the Sleeping Beauty series, which came out under the pseudonym AN Roquelaure.

Despite her prolific output and substantial popularity, though, Rice was often regarded as an author of popular fiction, not as a serious novelist. In December 1985, the Clarion-Ledger‘s book columnist Jim Scafidel described The Vampire Lestat as “an off-beat interview with a down-beat vampire.” Yet, the following month, a feature article in the Hattiesburg American ended on this positive note:

Rice brings into the open our deep-rooted suspicions that there may be more to the vampire legend than what Bela Lugosi has led us to believe.