The Alabama Writers’ Forum
The Alabama Writers’ Forum, a partnership program of the Alabama State Council on the Arts, works to cultivate our state’s literary culture. We do that through supporting writers at all stages. We encourage our young writers to find their creative voice through the Father Goose Poetry Festival for Kids!–and through our Alabama High School Literary Arts Awards. We support the work of our state’s literary community through our Alabama Authors Directory, First Draft magazine, and other programming and opportunities for writers across the state. And we celebrate our state’s rich literary legacy through the Alabama Writers Hall of Fame. We are, above all, a community of writers united by our desire to advance the literary arts in Alabama. If that describes you — join us! There are many ways to get involved.
Bent but Not Broken
Bent but Not Broken By Mary Monroe Dafina, 2025 Paperback: $28.00 Genre: Historical Fiction Reviewed by Charlotte C. Teague With Bent but Not Broken, New York Times bestselling author Mary Monroe has produced another intriguing work of fiction set in rural Alabama in the early 1900s. Tackling themes of domestic violence, racism, infidelity, and religious hypocrisy, Monroe crafts a plot full of deception, tragedy, and murder against a backdrop of the Great Depression. This is Monroe’s fifth book in the Lexington, Alabama Novel series. Her last novel, Double Lives, was also set in this close-knit rural town. Surrounded by Alabama’s red clay hills, the story begins with a young Naomi Simmons feeling pressured to get married and move out of her widowed father's home to start a life of her own. Her father wants to marry Madeline "Maddy" Upshaw, a widow he has been visiting for ten years. Since her mother died during her birth, and she is the last of eight children at home, Naomi wants her father to have some happiness before he dies, so [...]
