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.
The Battle of Danziger Bridge
By Amos Jasper Wright IV Livingston Press, The University of West Alabama; 2026 Paperback: $22.00 Genre: Novel Reviewed by Edward Journey Six days after Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath ravaged New Orleans, New Orleans police officers, responding to a false or fabricated “officer down” call, murdered two innocent, unarmed victims and shot four more on Danziger Bridge over the Industrial Canal. Those murdered were hurricane survivors crossing the bridge in search of food on the other side; they survived the storm but couldn’t survive NOPD. The new novel by Amos Jasper Wright IV (Nobody Knows How It Got This Good, Petrochemical Nocturne) takes its name from that atrocity. Wright’s The Battle of Danziger Bridge is a verbal storm surge focused on two of the city’s defining events – Hurricane Katrina and the removal of Robert E. Lee’s statue from his eponymous traffic circle – and the impact of the 2016 Presidential election. Speaking of the election, one character asserts that 2016 is “a year we may try to forget but which will never forget us.” In a [...]
