Bookmark with Don Noble

Today's guest is Birmingham poet Ashley M. Jones. Jones is the author of three volumes of poetry, most recently Reparations Now!

Author Anthony Grooms, best know for his Bombingham, a novel addressing issues faced during the civil rights movement in the 1960s. In addition to his writing, Grooms teaches at Kennesaw State, and has also taught in Ghana and Sweden. Don spoke with Anthony in Studio UA, on campus at the University of Alabama.

Readers of Cassandra King novels, such as Queen of Broken Hearts, have come to expect variations on the story of a middle-aged woman whose life falls apart, but who was then comforted and supported by a group of loyal girlfriends. In Moonrise, her newest, King has a protaganist who marries a slightly older man, a widower, and the dead wife's friends are awful to her, cold and mean. Don spoke with Cassandra King at Alabama Southern Community College in Monroeville, AL.

R.P. Finch, after a long career as a mergers and acquisitions attorney in Atlanta, has produced a remarkable debut novel Skin In The Game. Set partly in the offices of a law firm, young associates fight over making partner, but it's also a racy, comic romp involving the inventing and licensing of a quantum super computer, the CIA, the mafia, and an imaginative thug entrepeneur looking to build a strip mall completely comprised of strip clubs.

Wayne Greenhaw is an Alabama institutuion. His latest book, The Long Journey, is his 16th volume of prose fiction and non-fiction as a journalist. Greenhaw covered Alabama politicis and broke the story of the My Lai Massacre. He has written about the drug trade, the rise of the Republican Party in South Mexcio, and country music.

Today's guest is Neal Wooten, who has written a chilling memoir of growing up on Sand Mountain. He also works as a stand-up comedian and writes comic strips. Don spoke with Neal in Studio UA at the University of Alabama.

The 2014 winner of the Clarence Cason Award for Excellence in Non-Fiction has a long career in journalism at the Birmingham News and is the author of a shelf of books on Alabama. Among the best known are The Judge, a biography of Frank Johnson Jr., Until Justice Rolls Down the story of the 16th Street Church bombing, and Selma Lord Selma interviews with two little girls who lived through the historical events at the Edmund Pettus Bridge and the March to Montgomery. Sikora is also the author of an amusing Alabama family memoir, Let Us Now Praise Famous Women.

From his debut volume Poachers, through his novels Hell at the Breach and Spunk, Tom Franklin's reputation has grown steadily. His newest Crooked is the story of a white man perhaps unjustly ostracized by his community as a murderer and the local black constable who had been his childhood friend. Franklin and his wife the poet Beth Ann Fennelly have courageously collaborated on a novel titled World Which Is To Be, released in the fall of 2013. Don spoke with Tom at Northeast Community College in Rainsville, AL.