R.T. Smith

Perhaps in part because I live at the foot of the Appalachians and occasionally teach the region’s literature, I was eager to read J. D. Vance’s best-selling Hillbilly Elegy. And I’ll admit that my enthusiasm was amplified by Vance’s appearances …

Artist Statement: My work inhabits that elusive place where memory and reality overlap. With a concern for light and atmosphere, I lift elements from their otherwise quotidian context and elevate them to into the realm of icon. By capturing …

Artist Statement: My work inhabits that elusive place where memory and reality overlap. With a concern for light and atmosphere, I lift elements from their otherwise quotidian context and elevate them to into the realm of icon. By capturing …

Reprinted from Shenandoah Vol. 57, No. 2 No matter how much anyone wants to hear about it, I’m not going to discuss the night in Bill Dunlap’s Memphis studio when we started shooting at a panoramic photocollage of Mississippi hogs …

I’ve long been an avid admirer of Brendan Galvin’s poetry, and I won’t try to dodge the obvious: I wrote a jacket blurb for his new collection, The Air’s Accomplices. However, few potential readers beyond those who hold the book …

Reviewed by R.T. Smith Urban Waite’s third novel, a crime thriller set in the small towns and woodlands of Washington State, unfolds the tale of a young sheriff’s deputy with a saddened and shaky marriage, a past damaged by the …

Professor of Romance Languages Domnica Radulescu joined the Washington and Lee faculty in 1992. She has since taught courses on Italian Renaissance literature and French language and literature, and co-founded the Washington and Lee Women’s and Gender Studies Program. Aside …

I began skimming Southern Sin with the suspicion that I wouldn’t enjoy it. The subtitle, “True Stories of the Sultry South & Women Behaving Badly,” suggested a compendium of wanna-be-naughty memoirs of the predictable and superficial sort. After all, “south” …

1. GUNS IN LITERARY STUDIES Because serious literature invites readers into conversations that extend beyond the fictional framework, teachers have to be willing to walk on thin ice to help students engage uncomfortable ideas and situations with the full force …

What possessed the U.S. War Department to order a thousand Austrian-style nine-foot lances of Norway fir, complete with foot-long blades and scarlet swallow-tail pennons, for Rush’s 6th Cavalry Regiment to brandish against artillery and barricaded soldiers armed with large-bore (and …

reviewed by R. T. Smith Although I’m not a trained historian, I’m often as interested in the methods of that discipline as I am its findings, and Susan Kerns’ explorations of Shadwell have tapped into that interest. Less familiar than …

Many readers and reviewers have embraced Goolrick’s novel for, I believe, its unashamed romanticism, the unwavering through-line of its plot and the enthusiasm of its lyrical interludes, such as, “The river water, the sweet Maury, so fresh and clear, still …

Coal Black Horse and Far Bright Star convinced me that Robert Olmstead can write as well as anyone around about the solitude, the boredom, the hellish waiting and the sheer horror that beset men at war, about to go to …

Caveat lector: I seem to be in a meddlesome mood. And from the starting gun, I don’t want you to think that I’m recommending this book for the reader primed for precise and evocative, character-driven fiction, though there are moments …

Dining withRobert Redford & Other Stories. By Tamra Wilson (Bristol, Virginia: Little Creek Books, 2011) Reviewed by Heather Duerre Humann If you take a dash of wit, a pinch of humor, and combine them with an eclectic assortment of lively …

The 6.5 Practices of Moderately Successful Poets: A Self-Help Memoir by Jeffrey Skinner (Sarabande) When I first glanced at this book, I was ready to dismiss it: I don’t care for contemporary memoirs of many sorts, litbiz as a subject …

A High Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes (New York Rev. Books, 1999). The current revival of A High Wind in Jamaica encourages me to believe that we haven’t devolved to a state in which all novels about young …

The Outlaw Album by Daniel Woodrell (Little, Brown) The first two Daniel Woodrell novels I read were engaging but discomfiting portraits of redneck miscreants which never fully satisfied because Woodrell is inclined to let his Ozark characters at important moments …

Two Guns for Vengeance (Jove, 2011) by J. R. Roberts While preparing my reading list for a course on the Western novel, I began to consider what to say about the kinds of books we won’t examine in the class. …

Inside Scientology by Janet Reitman (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011) Call me Wog (outsider), and an SP (Suppressive Person), not to mention entheta (flawed to the point of wickedness) and enamored of MEST (worldly goods). In fact, I am enturbulated, though …

Commentary by Catherine Anderson Many times throughout the process of reading Pinckney Benedict’s Miracle Boy and Other Stories I wanted to put the book down and stop, but I’m glad I didn’t. In a few of the stories, the violence, horror, …

Reprinted from Shenandoah Vol. 57, No. 2 No matter how much anyone wants to hear about it, I’m not going to discuss the night in Bill Dunlap’s Memphis studio when we started shooting at a panoramic photocollage of Mississippi hogs …

RECOMMENDED READING [A new feature for Shenandoah. Future recommendations will be made by interns, guests and contributing editors. In this issue they are all from the editor.] Books Reviewed: Young of the Year by Sydney Lea Copperhead by Rachel Richardson …