Jamie Kornegay lives in the Mississippi Delta, where he moved in 2006 to establish an independent bookstore, TurnRow Book Co. Before that he was a bookseller, events coordinator, and radio show producer at the famous Square Books in Oxford, Mississippi. He studied creative fiction under Barry Hannah at the University of Mississippi.Kornegay's new novel is Soil.
At Publishers Weekly the author tagged his ten best Southern Gothic books, including:
Citrus County by John BrandonRead about the other entries on the list.
Southern Gothic still seems like an Old South institution, and I wasn’t sure it could be properly represented in a modern setting. But John Brandon’s quietlybrilliant and unsung novel depicts the cruelty of youth in a New South Gothic. A frustrated eighth-grade boy commits a terrible act, which Brandon wisely lets simmer in the background as his characters move about rural Florida, bemused and nonchalant. The humor here has an off-handed, almost unintended quality that adds to the creepiness. The real world becomes Gothic in the long shadow of this book, and I admired the lingering, low-grade anxiety that book left in me.
The Page 69 Test: Soil.
Writers Read: Jamie Kornegay.
--Marshal Zeringue
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