By Suzy Alstrin
In English Professor Bill Walsh’s Composition, Rhetoric, and Research course, students are learning much more than grammar and argument structure. One of their most impactful projects involved writing book reviews. Their reviews will be published in an upcoming edition of the Southern Literary Review, a national magazine dedicated to literature from the American South. This feat represents a remarkable honor for the course’s dual-enrollment high school students and Reinhardt undergraduates.
Each student received a recently published book—primarily novels, donated by Donna Meredith, editor of the Southern Literary Review. With Walsh’s guidance, students read and analyzed the works, and crafted thoughtful, compelling reviews intended for a real-world literary audience. But writing was only the beginning. The reviews went through several rounds of detailed editing, with students learning to identify areas for improvement and ways to polish their work.
“Every writer needs an editor, as I’ve told my students,” Walsh said. “Yes, they needed my editorial eye, but overall, the reviews were excellent from the get-go. I wasn’t really surprised, however, as these are excellent students. To be published at such a young age in a well-respected literary journal is a high achievement. They should be proud of their accomplishment.”
