“We see how the literary tradition of southern letter writing is fundamentally relational, notsolitary; that writers work and are inspired by somewhere specific.”

As this is the Arts & Letters issue, it seemed only appropriate to write a letter to you from the historic Love House, where I work and where the Center for the Study of the American South at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has been headquartered for almost two decades. The one-and-a-half-story wood-framed home is located on a far corner of campus. My office was once a bedroom, warmed by a gas fireplace with its original Carpenter Gothic surround. It’s chilly now, and I have the fire going. I love its warmth and the sputtering sound of the gas flame. The home was built in 1887 for James Lee Love, a math professor, who lived here with his new wife, Julia James “June” Spencer Love, and his segregationist mother-in-law, Cornelia Spencer. It was a standalone residence on busy Franklin Street, which was then a quiet dirt road lined with trees. Its wide wraparound porch was a gathering place, but race, class, and the etiquette of age and gender determined where, how, and who occupied such spaces.