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.
No Place for Pilgrims
No Place for Pilgrims: Solving the Murder of William Moore, the Last Cold Civil Rights Case By Mike Marshall NewSouth Books, 2025 Hardcover: $34.95 Reviewed by Lesa Carnes Shaul Sometimes, when we are young and idealistic and full of dreams and promise, we imagine ourselves becoming the kind of adult who will make a difference, who will leave a mark, who will change the world. Then we move inexorably through time, and life and the general everydayness of existence intervene. We get tired. We get old. We assume that a younger generation, just as full of dreams and goals as we once were, will take up the mantle of righteousness we shrugged off under the burden of careers, mortgages, family obligations, disillusionment. When Mike Marshall was fourteen, he embarked on what initially seemed like the fulfillment of a common school assignment: a research project on civil rights for his ninth-grade civics class. We know these projects; we’ve all done something of the sort at some point in our academic journeys. The bicentennial year of 1976 [...]
