When It Gets Cold in the South: Stories by Exodus Oktavia Brownlow (Hardcover) (PREORDER)

Fiction - Short Stories - Southern - Women - African American & Black

RELEASE DATE: 1/26/2027 (WILL SHIP DIRECTLY FROM OUR SUPPLIER'S WAREHOUSE)

Exodus Oktavia Brownlow's stories are set in the imagined town of Honey, Mississippi, and they move through generations of shared history―the town's inhabitants are bound by the food they serve, the hymns they lift into the air, and the thick Southern heat. This place crackles with life: a mother's remedy sizzling on the stove, a gunshot echoing through the woods, a bee humming its way home. Honey is a place where sweetness lingers, where sharpness hides beneath the surface, where people can be tender, sticky, and cruel all at once.

When It Gets Cold in the South stretches across centuries―from the 1600s to today―following characters who balance inherited wisdom with their own visions for the future. From a mother and young daughter confronting the veiled racism of beauty pageants, to a royal family caught between reigning supreme and total extinction, to siblings united by their love of Michael Jackson's Thriller, to cowboys captured by kudzu's clutches and a predator's prowls, these stories reveal a South that is both tender and fierce.

By employing inventive structures, rhythmic dialogue, and richly sensory prose, Brownlow conjures a world alive with sound and texture―where you hear oil pop, feel the sky's cold settle in your core, and carry the South's heat and chill in your bones. Bold, vulnerable, and unforgettable, When It Gets Cold in the South marks the arrival of an extraordinary storyteller.

AUTHOR BIO: 

Exodus Oktavia Brownlow is a writer, editor, fashion designer, and sewist from Blackhawk, Mississippi. She received her BA in English from Mississippi Valley State, and her MFA from Mississippi University for Women. She is an associate editor at Fractured Lit and the editor in chief of The Loveliest Review. She is the author of an essay collection, I'm Afraid That I Know Too Much About Myself Now, and her work has been published or is forthcoming in Electric Lit, Denver Quarterly, Best Microfiction, Wigleaf, and other publications. She has been nominated for Best Small Fictions and the Pushcart Prize, and her piece, "When the World Was Ending We Wore the Cornrows, We Twisted Our Coils, and We Waited" was listed as a Notable Essay in Best American Essays.

Review Quotes:

Alive with lyrical energy and precise imagery, Brownlow's work celebrates the richness of Black stories and offers a striking glimpse into Southern life. Readers will return to When It Gets Cold in the South often--Brownlow's talent marks her as a literary star in the making.--Kristen J. Gentry, author of Mama Said, longlisted for the 2024 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection