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.
Fourteenth Colony
Fourteenth Colony: The Forgotten Story of the Gulf South During America’s Revolutionary Era By Mike Bunn NewSouth Books, 2026 Paperback: $28.95 Genre: History/Colonial Reviewed by Foster Dickson Who ever heard of an American colony called West Florida? Certainly not me, until I read historian Mike Bunn’s book Fourteenth Colony. There is a good reason that the subtitle begins with “The Forgotten Story of...” We Americans have been taught for generations that there were thirteen colonies—Maine to Georgia. Yet, like so many aspects of our common history, closer examination yields different truths, which can be more holistic, more contextual, and more exacting. This story begins an English military victory in the French and Indian War, which shifted the balance of power in the area of the Gulf Coast in the 1760s. To start us off, Bunn explains how French and Spanish colonizers had led the way in the New World, establishing the now-familiar port cities of New Orleans, Mobile, and Pensacola. Yet, neither the cities nor the surrounding territories were well-developed, so the British had a lot of [...]
