Novels of a new South

Yet another book unfolds in Atlanta, though not the Old South Atlanta of "Gone With the Wind" or the New South Atlanta of "A Man in Full." This is post-punk Atlanta, more Little Five Points than high Buckhead, an urban-suburban streetscape populated with delinquent kids whose lives rotate around listening to Nirvana, watching "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" and scoring smack.

None of these debut novels, due out early next year, is particularly, or in the case of the first two books, even remotely, Southern.

Yet "Valeria's Last Stand" by Marc Fitten, "The Age of Orphans" by Laleh Khadivi and "Futureproof" by N. Frank Daniels seem collectively to ring in, perhaps louder than ever, a new era for literary Atlanta.

Each author is under 35 and a graduate of a metro Atlanta high school. None was born here —- one has already moved and another plans to leave soon —- but all had defining experiences here.

And most significantly: The work of each is already generating buzz, as a book to be taken seriously, far beyond the Perimeter.

Fitten's novel, on shelves in May, will be published by Bloomsbury in eight other countries, including Australia, France, Israel and Italy.

Khadivi, whose novel (also from Bloomsbury) comes out in March, recently won a Whiting Foundation Award, the $50,000 prize given annually to emerging writers.

And Daniels embodies the sort of 21st-century publishing tale that someday could become commonplace. He initially self-published "Futureproof," posting its first 50 pages on his MySpace page. A kind of viral word-of-mouth eventually reached Harper Perennial, a division of HarperCollins, which will publish the book in January.

For observers of the local literary scene, the three new books mirror the Atlanta area's evolving and increasingly global community —- one that may finally get its due.

"It's indicative of the maturing literary scene in this area," said Tom Bell, co-founder of the Decatur Book Festival, which in three years has become the fifth-largest book festival in the country. "I think it's long been here, but the rest of the publishing and reading world hasn't necessarily known it's here."

Bell recalls going to New York when the festival began to ask publishers about authors they could send to read their work in Decatur.

"And time and time again they'd say, 'We don't really have any Southern books coming out this year.' I had to explain that we don't necessarily need things about wisteria and hound dogs on porches. There are all different styles and places.

"These three books are a very strong statement of that fact," Bell added. "We can be proud of traditional Southern literature in Atlanta, but it's not all we do. We have people coming from all over, who've traveled all over, who have many different things to say."

Khadivi, the Creative Writing Fellow in Fiction at Emory University, has traveled the farthest of the three writers, yet she acknowledges the South as a critical influence on her work, which she plans to complete as a generational trilogy. She responds to many of the same regional forces that native Southerners do, calling herself "a disciple of Faulkner."

Born in Iran, Khadivi moved with her family to a series of countries and U.S. cities before landing here and graduating in 1995 from the Atlanta International School.

While living what she called the "enclosed life of a high school student and immigrant," she said, the South's impact was unavoidable.

"The South affected a lot of ways I recognize history," she said. "I often think if I grew up in California I'd have a very different understanding of history. The South can produce writers who, despite their nationality, can have a relationship with history, and that history is the beginning of narrative.

"You walk around here as if the South won the war, so the notion of history is kind of changed," she added. "It's been altered in some sense because of loyalties that run through the blood. For a writer, it's a nice place to be —- to be around revisionist history, which is what fiction is."

Fitten, 34, moved here from New York at 15 with his Panamanian parents. The 1991 Marist School graduate calls Atlanta "a global city," and from his perch as editor of The Chattahoochee Review, produced at Georgia Perimeter College, said it now has writers "starting to reflect the international flavor of Atlanta."

So what's left?

"You've got everything you need for a literary scene now," he said. "You've got the writers who've been here, you've got the Pulitzer Prize winner [poet Natasha Trethewey], you've got a major book festival.

"Everything you need to have a literary town," Fitten added. "Except now maybe what we need is an audience."

Marc Fitten

> Age: 34

> Book: "Valeria's Last Stand"

> Publication date: May 1

> High school: Marist School

> College: Kennesaw State University; completing MFA degree at Georgia State University.

> Currently: Editor, The Chattahoochee Review, Georgia Perimeter College

> Excerpt: "Valeria never whistled. Nor did she approve of people who did. In sixty-eight years, what Valeria had learned to be a truth about character was that people who whistled were crass. Whistlers were untrustworthy and irresponsible. They were shiftless. They were common. Butchers whistled. Peasants also. When they were supposed to be ... completing any number of tasks peasants are meant to complete, Valeria was certain she could find them instead with their chins wet from a half-liter of beer, sitting in the village's tavern, whistling at the slutty proprietress, and telling off-color jokes."

Laleh Khadivi

> Age: 31

> Book: "The Age of Orphans"

> Publication date: March 3

> High school: Atlanta International School

> College: Reed College (Portland, Ore.); MFA, Mills College (Oakland, Calif.)

> Currently: Creative Writing Fellow in Fiction, Emory University

> Excerpt: "A hand appears in the shaft of light, disembodied by the dark, and holds a severed head by the hair. The smear of life liquids: mucus, blood and dry salted tears glisten in the dusty sun and the head twirls neatly in one direction and then another and comes to stop and face the boy with a long-dead stare. The jaw drops with a small jointed snap and a plum-colored tongue falls out, swollen and thick. A voice from the dimness asks the boy in his language: 'Is this your baba?' "

N. Frank Daniels

> Age: 34

> Book: "Futureproof"

> Publication date: Jan. 27

> High school: Pebblebrook (Mableton)

> College: Berea College (Berea, Ky.)

> Currently: Lives in Nashville. Finished follow-up novel, tentatively titled "Gravity Eats the Dawn." Writing memoir.

> Excerpt: "My mother gave me the Beatles albums when I was seven. They were her prized possessions. Not a scratch on them. She walked toward us cradling the stack of records. Jonas and I were revving our Matchbox cars through the dirt at the end of the driveway. 'You can play with these if you want,' my mother said. 'I don't have a record player out here,' I said. She shrugged. 'Use them like Frisbees.' 'But what about Mee-shell my bell?' my brother asked. He was four ... Mother said, 'God doesn't want us to listen to that song anymore.' She walked away."