FOMITE

These stories explore a set of lives and events in the white American south — the desegregation of a school, the insecurity of a divorced worker, the generation gap in a Vietnam-era family, the loss of a mother’s dreams as her children grow, the search for truth behind an old family tale, and a son’s strained loyalty to his estranged parents — all of which reflect the country's surly, growing cultural restlessness.

 

 

Praise

‍ “Funny, raw, smart, and with a true ear for the ragged music of a certain Southern English—that's how Charles Lamar Phillips's stories hit.It's fine work that feels drawn from life.”
—James Whorton, Jr., author of Angela Sloan, Frankland, and Approximately Heaven

“The humane, curious, and sympathetic eye of Charles Lamar Phillips is on full display in the virtuosic short stories of Dead South. Reading this book is an immersive and—corny as it probably sounds—life-affirming experience. Phillips is a gifted and supremely original writer.”
—Christine Sneed, author of The Virginity of Famous Men and Little Known Facts

“These are skillfully rendered tales of troubled souls—young and old, innocent and not so innocent—searching for meaning in lives past and present and doing so in a time and region wrapped in tradition, class, and repressed desire, from a fine new voice that reflects, refracts, and often wonderfully upends old Southern literary standards.”
—George Rollie Adams, author of the multiple prize-winning novel South of Little Rock

 

About the Author

Charles Lamar Philips’s fiction appears in such journals as New England Review, Massachusetts Review, Cincinnati Review, Raritan, Fifth Wednesday, The Brooklyner, and The Chaffin Journal, and his story “Show of Hands” was awarded the Chaffin Award for Fiction. His novel Estranged is due from Regal House Publishing in the fall of 2020. A graduate of the University of Iowa’s Writers Workshop, Phillips has also written or co-authored a couple dozen, trade nonfiction and historical works for a variety of houses, and he has been an editor at Congressional Quarterly and The Washington Star. He was editor of the American Council on Education’s Higher Education and National Affairs and the American Association for State and Local History’s History News. And he edited the journals of the Iowa Historical Society and headed its press. For a number of years, Phillips wrote the “Day to Remember” column for American History magazine. He is currently managing editor of the American Journal of Play.