52 - Dante's Old South Radio Show (August 2023)

August 2023 Dante’s Old South 
Jeffrey Dale Lofton hails from Warm Springs, Georgia, best known as the home of Roosevelt’s Little White House but calls the nation’s capital home now. He is a senior advisor at the Library of Congress, surrounded by books and people who love books—in short, paradise. Red Clay Suzie is his first novel, a fictionalized memoir written through his personal lens growing up a queer, physically-misshapen outsider in a conservative family and community in the Deep South. It has won the Seven Hills Literary Prize for Fiction and was recently longlisted for The Center for Fiction 2023 First Novel Prize. www.jeffreydlofton.com Moni Basu is the director of the MFA in Narrative Nonfiction and the Charlayne Hunter-Gault Distinguished Writer in Residence at the University of Georgia. She is an award-winning veteran journalist who worked at CNN, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and various other news outlets. Born in Kolkata, India, Basu grew up straddling two cultures. As such, her work has explored race and identity as well as immigration. She has reported exhaustively from South Asia and the Middle East. Her 2012 e-book, Chaplain Turner’s War grew from a series of stories on an Army chaplain in Iraq. A platoon sergeant named her “Evil Reporter Chick,” which became the name of her blog, and she was featured once as a war reporter in a Marvel comics series. https://online.uga.edu/degrees-certificates/low-residency-mfa-narrative-nonfiction https://grady.uga.edu/academics/low-residency-master-fine-arts-narrative-media-writing/ After a colorful life spanning four continents and 16 cities, she earned her keep as cook, chambermaid, waitress, fisherwoman, missionary, speaker/teacher, and academic editor and tutor, Marilyn Kriete now lives in British Columbia, Canada Her first memoir, Paradise Road, relates the runaway/hippie/bicycling odyssey that led to the next chapters of her unconventional life. The Box Must be Empty is her second memoir. You can follow her writing journey at www.MarilynKriete.com. Songs provided by Lizzie Thomas: https://www.lizziethejazzsinger.com Instrumental provided by Justin Johnson: https://www.justinjohnsonlive.com Special Thanks Goes to: Wild Honey Tees: www.wildhoneytees.com The Crown: thecrownbrasstown.com Mercer University Press: www.mupress.org Mr. Classic’s Haberdashery: theemanor.org Woodbridge Inn: www.woodbridgeinnjasper.com The Red Phone Booth: www.redphonebooth.com The host, Clifford Brooks’, The Draw of Broken Eyes & Whirling Metaphysics and Athena Departs are available everywhere books are sold. His chapbook, Exiles of Eden, is only available through my website. To find them all, please reach out to him at: [email protected]  Check out his Teachable courses on thriving with autism and creative writing as a profession here: www.brooks-sessions.teachable.com