About

April Gloaming Publishing is a nonprofit independent press based in Nashville, TN that aims to capture and better understand the Southern soul, Southern writing, and the Southern holler.

In the words of William Faulkner, to be Southern is to, “Tell about the South. What do they do there. How do they live there. Why do they live at all.” April Gloaming seeks to arrive at the conclusions to these questions through amplifying the voices of the unbridled holler.

Who is a Southern Author?

Southern authors are steeped in the grotesque, are nourished and entranced by the land, are constantly cultivating and questioning their way to a truth in hopes to better understand themselves and the land that bore them. Southern authors are not necessarily from the South or live in the South, but they are people fed by isolation, bursting at the seams to get their story out, though most of the time, their screams go unheard. They find a connection to the land, are scarred, sometimes ashamed, of their past; they divulge too much information to complete strangers amid the slovenly wilderness surrounding the convenience store, in which they stand under a tattered Confederate flag, languidly held up by old fishing wire, bound to return to the dust from which it was borne, and ask, “Why?”

What is the Southern landscape?

There is a thickness to the air of the South, a certain character to it that ravages your body and makes its home inside you. It is oppressive and paralyzing, causing your whole body to swell up in its presence. It clings like breath, the story of the air, the rivers, and the trees, flowing from the land and back into our mouths where it is again expelled in the form of another story. When you drive down our highways, you see rain-drenched billboards for strip clubs and adult video stores, and then a mile down the road see a sign that condemns you to Hell for your lust, but no matter the amount of rains, they cannot wash away the perversions our own hearts and mouths lust for, and these moments are where knowledge is bitten, chewed, and spat back out again.

What is Southern writing?

Southern writing is pitted against the stigma that the twang resonating from our tongues insinuates our ignorance. It is bred from us clawing through the rubble of our past’s downfall to build a story. It is borne from the blood of all our past’s sins carried with us, day in and day out, and spit out onto our bourbon-stained notebooks in search of our own personal revival.

Who is a Southern Artist?

The art is pregnant with a heat experienced through a thick presence like a permeating fever as the artist experiments with mysticism, known or unknown. They see the Eden, they know the Eden, they culture and breed the Eden but have blood on their hands. Southern art grabs you by the waist, courts you for months, sends flowers to your parents, and leads you to a truth.

What is April Gloaming?

April Gloaming seeks voices with grit, chaotic and devastating, those that spit before hollering their trueness. We seek those rare works that redefine the literature landscape, ones which grab a palmful of dirt and seed and with language grow something entirely new, a fresh voice bursting from the impregnable air of a new Southern identity, one inclusive and open to all backgrounds, ethnicities, and identities. We aim to paint the full picture of the New South budding from these small dark corners. And illuminate those voices which have been trampled on for far too long, creating a choir of voicesong.