If you’re waiting eagerly for NewSouth’s release of Reverend Robert Graetz’s civil rights memoir A White Preacher’s Message on Race and Reconciliation, don’t forget that Rev. Graetz also writes a regular guest column in the Montgomery Advertiser. To tide you over until White Preacher’s Message is released, follow this link to Rev. Graetz’s most recent article, which talks about the recent visit of history and law students to Montgomery (including their visit to the NewSouth Bookstore).

A White Preacher’s Message details Rev. Graetz’s life as the young white pastor of a black Lutheran Church in Montgomery, where he and his wife were among the few whites who supported the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Though his church and home were bombed and his life was threatened, Rev. Graetz never wavered, and his memoir discusses both the boycott, white privilege, black forgiveness, and the present-day challenges for human and civil rights, including gay rights.

A White Preacher’s Message on Race and Reconciliation is currently available for pre-order directly from NewSouth Books, or from Amazon.com or your favorite local or online bookseller.

Every so often I get calls from unpublished poets wanting to query a poetry collection. My sense is that as the book market shrinks overall, poetry releases are fewer and fewer, and those collections being published are largely collections of established poets’ work (see American Wake and At the Forest Edge from NewSouth).

I’m surprised by how many querying poets want to propose a collection before any of their poems have been published independently. For a new poet, the place to start is by getting your poems published in magazines–generally nationally distributed–such that when you send a query to an editor, you can show an impressive list of places the poems have already appeared. Essentially, it’s your “way in”–as hard as it is for poets right now, an editor is more likely to give your poems a second look if they have another venue’s stamp of approval.

If anyone can recommend good journals or literary magazines for new poets, preferably national and print-based, please leave a comment. Thanks!

The July 2006 issue of Library Journal offers high praise for Tony Dunbar’s Tubby Meets Katrina from NewSouth Books, noting that “Dunbar’s portrayal of people putting their lives together and helping others is remarkable.” From the review:

“In Dunbar’s seventh Tubby Dubonnet mystery, the New Orleans lawyer-turned-sleuth returns home from Bolivia the day before Hurricane Katrina hits. While he is trying to stay alive in the devastated city, a psychopathic killer escapes from jail and heads to New Orleans to target Tubby’s daughter. Dunbar’s latest novel is not a true mystery but more of an action tale of survival. Once again displaying his fine command of storytelling, Dunbar takes a major tragedy and shows how anyone can learn to survive and eventually begin to live again. This may be the first novel dealing with Katrina and will not be the last, but Dunbar’s portrayal of people putting their lives together and helping others is remarkable. Dunbar lives in the new New Orleans.”

Tubby Meets Katrina is available directly from NewSouth Books, Amazon, or your local or online book retailer.