Saturday, March 27, 2021
Southern Writers Anthology Selection
Even though I’ve been “gone off up north” for twenty years, I
lived my first thirty-three years in the Deep South and all of my fiction has
focused on southern characters. I’m honored that southern fiction scholar Jean
W. Cash, author of biographies of Flannery O’Connor and Larry Brown, selected
me as one of nineteen authors to be featured in Twenty-First-Century Southern Writers: New Voices, New Perspectives published
by the University Press of Mississippi. Kevin Catalano, whose excellent fiction
deserves a wide audience and will earn him many accolades in the future, did a
fine job with his essay “Joe Samuel Starnes: A Devoted Disciple of the Rough
South Gospel” that explores my novels Calling, Fall Line, and Red Dirt.
Saturday, March 13, 2021
Just What Leaks: My Film Work Debut

Wednesday, October 4, 2017
A Poem to Read While Waiting in Line for the Jukebox
Putting cash into a jukebox is not the wisest expenditure, but I've long had one go-to song that gives you the most value for your money. I worked it into my poem "Harmonica Rescue," which I'm happy to say is published on page 24 of the new Philadelphia Stories magazine.
Thursday, April 13, 2017
Writing about the South with "Admirable Authority and Poetic Understanding"
In the book Rough South, Rural South: Region and Class in Recent Southern Literature, now out in paperback from the University Press of Mississippi, Jean W. Cash writes about my work in her essay "Twenty-first Century Writers: The Rural Southern Tradition Continues."
Cash, who edited the book, is the author of the first biography of Flannery O'Connor and Larry Brown's biography. She writes of my novels Calling and Fall Line:
In both novels, Starnes has produced work worthy of attention, providing real insight into how misguided ambition and the power of money and government contribute to the loss of the agrarian South both physically and spiritually. Both works transcend their immediate setting through Starnes's characterization of men incapable of adapting to daily life. Starnes knows his home region and its people and how to write about them with admirable authority and poetic understanding.
Friday, August 5, 2016
5 Questions with MysteriousPress.com

Friday, April 15, 2016
Returning 140-plus: My Sports Illustrated Web Debut
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Photo by F. Carter Smith |
I lived my George Plimpton moment at the ATP 250 U.S.Clay Court Championships in Houston last weekend. A great time interviewing John Isner (at left), Sam Querrey, and trying to return a ball from Reilly Opelka, who we will definitely be hearing more about. Read all about it on the Sports Illustrated web site.
Saturday, March 26, 2016
Taking Red Dirt: A Tennis Novel to the U.S. Red Dirt Championship
Recent support of the book has come from two big names at Sports Illustrated who know a thing or two about tennis. Frank Deford said, "I enjoyed it immensely...a marvelous job of pivoting the plot and making it such a good story." Jon L. Wertheim, executive editor for SI and a regular fixture on Tennis Channel, said in his pre-U.S. Open blog post last August that it "comes with highest recommendation."
For more on the novel, visit the About Red Dirt page.
Tuesday, January 12, 2016
An Essay on Larry Brown in Rough South, Rural South
Fifteen years ago, after I had begun to get serious about writing fiction, Larry Brown's stories, novels, and especially his essays that shared his own experience inspired me to keep working -- even when my own writing was not going very well. When my first novel Calling came out in 2005, the year after he died at the young age of 53, I dedicated it in his memory. Now, my essay "Larry Brown: A Firefighter Finds His Voice" is part of the new collection Rough South, Rural South: Region and Class in Recent Southern Literature. I hope that it helps more readers and writers to discover him. The collection was published this month by the University Press of Mississippi and edited by Jean W. Cash and Keith Perry.
Friday, September 4, 2015
Jaxie Skinner at the U.S. Open
Signing books at the U.S. Open was almost as good as playing in the tournament. Books will be available in the store through the finals. Check out my slideshow of photos from Wednesday, September 2.
Tuesday, August 25, 2015
Signing Red Dirt: A Tennis Novel at the U.S. Open
With my backhand, I never had a ghost of a chance to play at the U.S. Open, but my tennis novel Red Dirt will be making its debut at the final Grand Slam tournament of 2015.
Books will be available in the U.S. Open bookstore located in the Chase Center, the indoor building, nearest the East Gate. I'll be there from 3-4 p.m. Wednesday, September 2 to sign copies.
Sunday, August 9, 2015
The Philadelphia Inquirer on Red Dirt: Tennis as Metaphor for Life
Frank Wilson, the retired books editor for the Philadelphia Inquirer, reviews Red Dirt very kindly in this Sunday's paper. "I am sure I didn't understand all the technical nuances, but I always got the gist," Wilson writes. "That's because Starnes shrewdly couches them in a way that makes the playing on the court seem so much a metaphor for life's vicissitudes and our own fleeting awareness." Check out the full review online. For previous reviews and coverage, click here.
Sunday, August 2, 2015
Tenth Anniversary of Calling
It has been ten years this month since my first novel, Calling, was published by Jefferson Press. Jefferson Press is gone, but Calling lives on in the hardback first editions with the dark cover that are floating around or the more easily accessible ebook issued last year by Otto Penzler's MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Media under the nifty green cover.
Tuesday, July 14, 2015
A Roundup of Red Dirt Coverage
Since Red Dirt: A Tennis Novel's release, the novel has been reviewed by the Philadelphia Inquirer, among other places, and I've been interviewed a few times, including one television appearance. I also have turned up in a few other news stories in the Inquirer, and I contributed an essay about the best tennis matches I ever saw. Here's a roundup with links:
Best New Fiction Review
"Talking Sports Books and More with Joe Samuel Starnes." A Q&A on The Classical
"Summer Reading List" Atlanta Magazine
"The Inductor -- A Conversation with Joe Samuel Starnes: An Interview with Kevin Catalano." The Spark: The Alternating Current Press
"Joe Samuel Starnes Delivers the Original Redneck Rocky of Tennis Novels with Red Dirt." NoirCon blog.
"Three New Books with Birmingham Connections." Mark Kelly in Weld for Birmingham.
Cedartown Native, Novelist Returning Home." Cedartown (Ga.) Standard.
"The Greatest Men's Tennis Matches I Ever Saw--And a Few I Didn't." My essay on The Changevoer.
"Red Dirt by Joe Samuel Starnes." Off the Leash.
"At Green Valley, Many Happy Returns." Philadelphia Inquirer.
"Local Readers and Bookstores Await Harper Lee's 'Watchman'." Quoted in Philadelphia Inquirer story.
The video below is from my April appearance on Georgia Highland College Television in Rome, Georgia. The interview gets started at the three minute mark.
Wednesday, May 20, 2015
Atlanta Magazine: Red Dirt "A come-back worth cheering"
The June issue of Atlanta magazine arriving in mailboxes now includes Teresa Weaver's review of Red Dirt: A Tennis Novel in her "Summer Reading" feature. She had this to say about Jaxie Skinner's story:
"After a rapid rise through the professional tennis ranks, Jaxie suffers an even faster inglorious fall, and then, 10 years later, a come-back worth cheering."
Wednesday, April 15, 2015
The Book is Out -- Southern Events from Atlanta to Birmingham
Red Dirt: A Tennis Novel -- described as both a "tale with the pace and power of a Rafael Nadal forehand" and "the original redneck Rocky of tennis novels" -- is now available.
From April 18 through April 25 I have eleven events lined up in Georgia and Alabama. Check out my schedule and come see me if you can.
I'm looking forward to taking the book back home where my tennis game and my literary life originated.
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