Memphis Magazine has named John Pritchard’s Junior Ray to their list of thirty-two “finest literary works with a Memphis flavor,” in honor of their thirty-second year of publication. Quipped Pritchard, “Junior Ray made the cut. It’s on the list with Faulkner and Foote, John Grisham and Jay MacInerny, and, of course, also with others less luminous . . . and, to be sure, less numinous.”

In his review of Junior Ray, Memphis Magazine staffer Bruce VanWyngarden writes:

Pritchard, who grew up in the Mississippi Delta and now teaches college English in Memphis, wrote this provocative novella about a racist “good ole boy” sheriff from Mississippi a couple of years back. In his first work of fiction, he lets Junior Ray Loveblood tell his story in his own profane voice. It’s a Southern redneck tour de force — a dark and telling comedy, not for the squeamish.

Pritchard’s next book starring Junior Ray Loveblood, The Yazoo Blues, is forthcoming from NewSouth Books in Fall 2008. Read an excerpt now from The Yazoo Blues at the NewSouth Books website.

Junior Ray is available directly from NewSouth Books, Amazon.com, or your local book retailer.

As NewSouth author John Pritchard wraps up writing The Yazoo Blues, the sequel to his 2005 hit Junior Ray (named one of Barnes & Noble’s 2005 Sensational Debuts), he was interrupted the other day by news of the federal closing of the Platinum Plus club that serves as the inspiration for the Magic Pussy Cabaret & Club in The Yazoo Blues.

Writes Pritchard, “Even though the long—but mostly elastic—arm of the local, and also that of the federal, constabulary—with tarnished badges and secret shame in their blue-serge hearts and also, I am sure, with a gnawing ache in their guilty but plain-clothes souls, has locked tight the doors of this almost mythical refuge, Junior Ray expresses optimism in the last few lines of The Yazoo Blues, where he declares that he is confident that ‘Sex and the Magic Pussy will outlast the law.'”

To read an excerpt from Junior Ray’s adventures inside The Magic Pussy in The Yazoo Blues, visit the Yazoo Blues book page.

The Yazoo Blues is forthcoming from NewSouth Books in fall 2008. Junior Ray, is available directly from NewSouth Books, at Amazon.com, or from your local book retailer.

NewSouth novelist John Pritchard, who made Barnes & Noble’s 2005 Top Ten Sensational Debut Novels list with his book Junior Ray, is a featured author at the Tennessee Williams Festival in New Orleans this coming weekend. He’ll read from The Yazoo Blues, his hilarious next book due out from NewSouth next spring. Read an excerpt from The Yazoo Blues here.

In The Yazoo Blues, our antihero leaves law enforcement and becomes a historian. It‚Äôs all gotdam curious, if Junior Ray does say so hisself. John Pritchard’s first novel, Junior Ray, is available directly from NewSouth Books, at Amazon.com, or from your local book retailer.

Visit John Pritchard’s Amazon blog at the following link.