Michael Farris Smith is the recipient of the Mississippi Author Award, Transatlantic Review Award, Brick Streets Press Short Story Award, Mississippi Arts Commission Literary Arts Fellowship, and the Alabama Arts Council Fellowship Award for Literature. A graduate of Mississippi State and the Center for Writers at Southern Miss, Michael currently resides in Columbus, Mississippi, with his wife and two daughters. In his book Rivers, out today in paperback, he draws from his Southern roots to tell a powerful story of survival and redemption set in the post-Katrina South after violent storms have decimated the region. Reviewers have compared Michael to a slew of Southern literary greats—Cormac McCarthy, Faulkner, Larry Brown and Margaret Atwood, to name a few—but Off the Shelf was curious about who Michael considered to be his biggest influences while writing his book. Here, he gives us a strong mix of dystopian, post-apocalyptic and New Orleanian.
Southern Roots: 4 Books On Michael Farris Smith’s Shelf
I stumbled upon this dystopian gem a couple of years ago and was shocked that it is so obscure. By Russian writer Yevgeny Zamyatin in the 1920s, it's an examination of a civilization oppressed by conformity. It is far ahead of its time, with an unforgettable ending.
I stumbled upon this dystopian gem a couple of years ago and was shocked that it is so obscure. By Russian writer Yevgeny Zamyatin in the 1920s, it's an examination of a civilization oppressed by conformity. It is far ahead of its time, with an unforgettable ending.
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Cormac McCarthy was long an influence of mine before this novel. It is one of the few books I can recall that has kept me awake at night. It is bleak, gritty, hurtful, and I think extraordinarily human.
Cormac McCarthy was long an influence of mine before this novel. It is one of the few books I can recall that has kept me awake at night. It is bleak, gritty, hurtful, and I think extraordinarily human.
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I had the good fortune of getting to know Mary Robison when I was a beginning writer. She is unafraid to experiment with voice and style, and this New Orleans novel is told in short, striking paragraphs and leaves the differences between good and bad floating in a Crescent City cloud.
I had the good fortune of getting to know Mary Robison when I was a beginning writer. She is unafraid to experiment with voice and style, and this New Orleans novel is told in short, striking paragraphs and leaves the differences between good and bad floating in a Crescent City cloud.
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There is little to say about Walker Percy's novel that hasn't been said, but the notions of belonging and spiritual crisis transcend into any time. And we see New Orleans as an insider. If Paris is a moveable feast, then New Orleans is a portable cocktail.
There is little to say about Walker Percy's novel that hasn't been said, but the notions of belonging and spiritual crisis transcend into any time. And we see New Orleans as an insider. If Paris is a moveable feast, then New Orleans is a portable cocktail.
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