Author Katy Simpson Smith is the author of The Maltese Version (FSG Originals)

One day they were in love and the next, a manuscript appeared in his study, written in a language she didn’t speak.

Leonie and Max are on separate but tangled paths. Now, she might be pregnant. And he’s not answering her texts, off on some questionable assignment translating poetry from a language he seems barely to know.

When Max blinks off the map, Leonie asks Rhoda—expert travel writer—to track him down to Malta.

What kind of caper is unfolding?

Charged and mischievous, Katy Simpson Smith’s The Maltese Version upends the stability of language, desire, and the ways we make meaning.

“… a lush, finely textured, riveting dive into lives tangled by language and time. The Maltese Version is irresistible. – Téa Obreht, author of The Morningside

Born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi, Katy Simpson Smith is the author of The Story of Land and Sea, Free Men, The Everlasting, The Weeds, and We Have Raised All of You. Her writing has appeared in The Washington Post, The Paris Review, the Oxford American, Granta, and elsewhere.

Simpson lives in New Orleans.

Born in Chicago and raised in Jackson, MS, Anissa “Bigg Sexyy” Hampton, is known for gritty Southern soul and R&B as she fronts her own H-Funk Band.

The band move came after Annisa spent years singing background vocals for artists such as Willie Clayton, Calvin Richardson and Keeshea Pratt. She has served as an opening act for such performers as Brian McKnight, Regina Bell and “Mr. Gritty Southern Soul” himself, Bobby Rush.

In 2018, she hit with her single, “Big Sexy.”

Her latest single is “Doing My Own Thang.”

Other singles include, “Move the Train,” “Holding On to All Your Good Loving,” and “Doggone Shucky Ducky.”

Anissa was honored in 2023 as the “Entertainer of the Year” at The Best of Mississippi Awards.

She has also won accolades from the Jackson Music Awards and the Soul Music Awards.

A new Blues EP, Variations of Me is forthcoming.

Larry McGill, better known as Ra’Shad the Blues Kid, was born in Laurel, Mississippi — the heart of the Piney Woods in south Mississippi. He was mentored in the blues by the late L.C. Ulmer (1928-2016), a Thacker favorite.

Ra’Shad moved on from L.C.’s acoustic approach and now plays electric guitar with an up tempo, hard-hitting, electric soul/blues band.

Ra’Shad’s latest album, released June 2026, is Raised on the Blues.

In 2023, Ra’Shad was nominated for the Jus Blues “BB King of The Blues” Award.  He was also inducted into The Alabama Blues Hall of Fame.

In 2025 Ra’Shad took second place in a crowded world-wide field at the International Blues Challenge in Memphis and was awarded the Lee Oskar Silver Prize.

Ra’Shad the Blues Kids’ latest release is the single, “Girl You Got It Going On,” recorded at Malaco Studios.

Photo: Chloe S.