Introduction of Deep Water, Dark Horizons:

Toni Morrison and Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., were late to the party. The whole gang in our creative writing class knew Suzanne Hudson had a gift. No amount of writing practice or study or efforts at imitation could bring a new writer to that level of art and skill. Our professor, John Craig Stewart, required a writing sample from any student who wanted into his program at the University of South Alabama. I can see him now as he removed pages from his faculty mailbox and went into his office on the second floor of the Humanities Building. Sitting heavily in his swivel chair, propping up his feet for a read of this latest sample. He sighed. How many timid submissions for a chair at his table? How many manuscripts from students who’d get a handwritten note, “I’m sorry . . .” Mr. Stewart was a kind man. Walker Percy, in his introduction to A Confederacy of Dunces, confessed that reading a bad manuscript was the last thing he wanted to waste his time doing. And, further, he simply would stop, and sometimes with a single sentence. Writers would cringe knowing their blood and sweat to bring a story to life could be so grossly and easily rejected. But, like being offered a taste, say, of seafood gumbo for the very first time, you know immediately whether you like it. You don’t need to keep chewing. It would only get worse. With John Kennedy Toole’s manuscript, he knew in that first sentence as an author and editor of Louisiana State University Press, he was in the company of something good. He didn’t know it would win the Pulitzer Prize for the deceased writer.

Mr. Stewart’s eyes would have brightened with that first line of Suzanne Hudson’s sample story. A tilt of his head slightly forward, as if to get closer to the story, the words. With the last sentence, he’d keep holding the page. Maybe stare out the window, trying to picture the author. Bookish like Flannery O’Connor? She wrote that well. Tennessee writer William Gay, who Stephen King said, was “an American treasure laboring in obscurity in the hills of east Tennessee,” would many years later tell her he found her writing like that of Flannery O’Connor minus God.

I was also similarly arrested when I first heard Suzanne read a story in his class.

We showed up on Wednesday afternoons for the three-hour, seminar-style class. Mr. Stewart sat at the head of a long rectangular table, something like you’d see in a corporate board room. His gaggle of hopefuls, these emerging authors, sat five on either side and two brave souls at the other end of the table facing him. At the start of class, Mr. Stewart might say, “Today we’ll start with stories from Kenny Hall and John Hoodless and Erin Kellen. After the break, we’ll come back in for the second half of our class and hear Blake Savell and Sonny Brewer and Suzanne Hudson.”

Then he’d remind the class, as usual, when each reader finishes, “We will pause after each reading for ten seconds, and then offer comments and suggestions.”

He’d lift his hands from the table in front of him and slap them down, but lightly.

“Let’s get started. Are you ready Mr. Hall?”

“Mr. Stewart?”

“Yes, Mr. Brewer.”

“There’s this short story contest, for new writers only, sponsored by Penthouse.”

After the initial and not unexpected snark about the magazine, I listed some of the authors who’d been published in its pages: “James Baldwin, Philip Roth, Gore Vidal, Paul Theroux, Isaac Asimov, T. C. Boyle, Harry Crews, Don DeLillo . . .”

And then I added, “The first prize is $5,000, plus a purchase fee of $500. And the winning story will be published in the magazine, so your name can be added to that list of literary lions.”

Still, Erin Kellen protested, “There’re no women on that list.”

“So be the first,” I told her. Mr. Stewart took over. “What have you got to lose? Everyone should send in a story. Get with Brewer during the break or after class for the mailing address.”

I got my story back within two weeks. Whichever of the team of freelance editors hired to read 7,500 submissions from all over the world read mine had a hangover, I’m sure, and didn’t give my story a fair shake. But it was comforting to learn from my peers that their work, too, had been tossed aside.

All except for Suzanne Hudson.

Already that quarter, she’d won a contest sponsored by a New York-based literary magazine eponymously titled New Writers. Still, we were all shocked and maybe a little jealous when she brought in a letter from the Penthouse fiction editor, Paul Bresnick, saying her story “LaPrade” was one of a dozen semi-finalists. The letter also said that Toni Morrison had been one of the judges, and, further, that those twelve stories would be passed to Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., who would choose the overall winner.

“LaPrade” won. Suzanne was notified by a telegram she keeps to this day.

All in, she was paid $5,500 prize money and publication rights fee for “LaPrade,” which appeared in the December, 1977, issue of Penthouse. It was our senior year. And we demanded she take the class and Mr. Stewart to Thirstie’s Bar and Grill on Old Shell Road, just off campus, and treat us all to gallons of beer. She first bought a new washer and dryer. Then she bought rounds for whoever showed up that Wednesday night after class.

Our friend William Gay, that same writer, whose novel Twilight was selected by Stephen King as his favorite book of the year 2006, and who had two of his short stories made into movies, and who won a MacArthur Fellows Genius Grant, also entered the Penthouse magazine contest. He told Suzanne he was upset about losing. “Until I saw your picture,” he confessed.

“Yeah, she might be pretty,” I said to William, “but she didn’t shave her legs or under her arms.” Which didn’t bother him. They became dear friends. And he showed up for her, joining Suzanne and Frank Turner Hollon and me for a reading panel at Agnes Scott College. He never passed up a chance to boast about her writing, nor to confessing that Toni Morrison and Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., favored her writing over his.

Suzanne and I both wish William were with us still, for he would likely join her when she accepts the Truman Capote Prize from the Monroeville Literary Festival in the spring of 2025. This collection of stories, Deep Water, Dark Horizons, commemorates that event. It gives strong testimony to the power of Suzanne Hudson’s writing art and the literary career that I had the pleasure to watch grow from its bright beginning into her shining legacy of Alabama letters, as conveyed in her bibliography following the stories in this collection.

The crush I had on Suzanne during our days seated around Mr. Stewart’s table is none of your business.

Sonny Brewer, Waterhole Branch, Alabama

A native of Columbus, Georgia, with roots in southwest Georgia, Suzanne Hudson (rps.hudson@gmail.com) grew up in Brewton, Alabama, and has been a resident of Fairhope, Alabama, for nearly forty years. A retired public school teacher and guidance counselor, she is also the internationally prizewinning author of three novels, a “fictional” memoir, and her short stories and essays have been widely anthologized. Hudson lives near Fairhope, Alabama, at Waterhole Branch Productions, with her husband, author Joe Formichella (joe_ formichella@yahoo.com) and the other denizens of the Branch. She is the 2025 Truman Capote Prize winner.