“Emmolene’s Bones” by Jack Butler may well be the strangest love story ever written. “Hawk Gumbo,” also by Jack Butler, is the quintessential Southern Gothic or Grit Lit story. “Godsend” by Samuel Snoek-Brown is the story of a woman obsessed with the thought of murdering her neighbor because the neighbor has irritating habits and sings horrendously. Both … Read more
Yesterday I finished what I think was the third (can’t keep count) complete rewrite, start to finish, of my new novel Teacher. With deep thanks to Brynn Garman, Rin Westcott, Steve Tarry, Cameron Combs, Bryan Willis, Mian Carvan, Margaret Culbertson, Brady Olson, SJ Boyle, Nancy Sigafoos, Diane Sawyer, Don Orr Martin, Megan Kruse, Bev Sykes, … Read more
Mud Flat Press is thrilled to announce the publication of Angels Sleep Alone by James Robert Peery. Peery was my uncle and perhaps the person most responsible for inspiring me to become a writer. We’ve been working on it since July 2020 when his granddaughter sent us the manuscript. It was typed on a manual … Read more
Ink is Ricker Winsor’s latest book of poetry and drawings with approximately 150 drawings with poems, captions and comments and two essays: “Drawings and Wabi-sabi” and “What I Know About Art.” Winsor says, “Using reed pens and brushes, I made the effort over all those years to get out into the world and make my … Read more
Many people who were not alive at the time can hardly envision the casual racism, misogyny and classism that was alive and well in the 1940s and 1950s. The television series “Mad Men” gave a bit of a hint, but from what little I can remember—I was a child at the time—it was the everydayness … Read more
Excerpt from Angels Sleep Alone by James Robert Peery With introduction by Alec Clayton Newt Carter was a “Holy Roller” preacher in North Mississippi in the 1930s and ’40s whose revival tent filled with worshipers was destroyed in a tornado in his novel God Rides a Gale (Harper and Brothers 1940). Peery died in 1954 … Read more
A note from Alec Clayton: Jack Butler is one of the great Southern writers. His poetry, short stories and reviews have been published in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Poetry, Southern Poetry Review, Mississippi Review, New Orleans Review and elsewhere. His novel Living in Little Rock with Miss Little Rock (Knopf, 1993) was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. His other … Read more
I have wanted to write this for so long, but I get tired of my regrets and my shame of one kind or another. These days I try my best to find some shiny nuggets among the dross but mostly come up empty. I succeed most in looking at the clouds or at the … Read more
I never knew my uncle James Robert Peery, or if I ever did meet him I was too young to remember. He died when I was 11 years old, and for reasons I never knew, our branch of the family seldom visited his branch of the family. Nevertheless, he was my hero when I was … Read more
It was 1970. Abstract-Expressionism had dominated American and world art for almost three decades. For thousands of years before that, art had been pictures on walls and sculptures on pedestals meant to be admired for their beauty. Revolutionary new approaches to art during the 1960s changed all that. Alec Clayton’s graduate thesis with the academic … Read more