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Interview

COVID-19 and the Outbreak Narrative

by Priscilla Wald, Kym Weed

The more each of us can imagine what it would feel like to live in others’ lives, the better, I think. And the more inclusively we can all think, the more we can collectively begin to work for a world that is more just, more equitable, and in every sense healthier for all. If this »

Poetry

Cellar Door

by Southern Cultures

We’ve published poetry in our pages since nearly the beginning. So when our friends at the CELLAR DOOR—UNC‘s oldest undergraduate literary magazine—said their Spring 2020 Issue would be delayed due to the pandemic, we threw open our own doors and asked them to join us. We’re proud to present the work of seven Carolina undergraduates »

Fiction

Book Tour: The Prettiest Star

by Carter Sickels, Wiley Cash

Welcome to our virtual book tour. Since so many literary events have been canceled or postponed during the pandemic, we’re bringing authors with new books directly to you. We hope you’ll get to know an author or book to add to your reading list. We also encourage you to support your local bookshop. Set in »

Art

What Home Means

A coloring book

by Southern Cutures

In a moment when we’re encouraged to stay home and shelter-in-place, we’ve asked many of our illustrator friends to document what home now means to them. Print them out, color them in, and create your own to share with us online using the hashtag #SCatHome. You can also download a full printable PDF at the »

Food

Taking Stock: Part II

Stories, Staples, and Recipes

by Southern Cultures

We asked some of our friends and former contributors what they’ve been cooking from the cupboard during this time of self-isolation and limited grocery runs. Below, find three recipes that rely on pantry staples and that call on the comforts of home and family traditions. Peanut Butter and Banana Sandwiches By Bill Smith This lockdown »

Food

Taking Stock: Part I

Stories, Staples, and Recipes

by Southern Cultures

We asked some of our friends and former contributors what they’ve been cooking from the cupboard during this time of self-isolation and limited grocery runs. Below, find three recipes that rely on pantry staples and that call on the comforts of home and family traditions. Biscuit Church by April McGreger Sundays have always been a »

Poetry

Space Blanket

by Alan Shapiro

If in the crinkling thin as air metallicblankets there are flashes signaling backand forth over the little bodies wrappedinside them sleeping on cage floor, gym floor, floor of a defunct warehouse, don’t think of torchfires, beacons of distress, or in the softnessany sign of soothing though they’re softas tissue, even softer yet untearable, a just »

Snapshot

Snapshot: Willow, 37

by Jared Ragland

“As blood filled the syringe and tears began to fall down her cheeks, Willow’s mood shifted from excitement to determination, frustration to embarrassment.” Between 2015 and 2017, I partnered with University of Alabama at Birmingham sociology professor Heith Copes to create an ethnography of methamphetamine use in rural Northeast Alabama. Together, we interviewed and photographed »

Snapshot

Snapshot: Waughtown Street, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, 2019

by Aaron Canipe

“It’s another muggy southern summer and the landscape is overgrown with signs and symbols following in its oxygen. How much hill can a person bear?” The thing about moments for me is that they’re never about one thing. Frustratingly, photography carries a singular moment in time but must bear the weight, too—of context, truth, and »

Film

Empathy in a Red State

by Elaine McMillion Sheldon

“I have skin in the game. I live here. Appalachians hold me accountable at the grocery store, and that makes the work, and me, more honest.” The week of March 13, 2017, was like any other week for me. I was hustling to get access to a tense courtroom for my feature documentary Recovery Boys »

Snapshot

Snapshot: A Tribute

by Jon-Sesrie Goff

“What I appreciate most in this document are my grandmother’s inked corrections of the misspelled name of the family who enslaved ours.” My grandmother was a secret archivist. When we cleaned out her home after she died, we found neatly organized records of her life. Among stacks of newspaper articles of nearly every milestone in »

Photo Essay

Bare Handed

by Holly Lynton

“We were not so much learning how to photograph as how to see.” I often describe my undergraduate photography training at Yale University as a photo boot camp. On the first day of class, we were told to acquire a 35 mm camera—ideally one that did not require a battery—with a 50 mm lens. Zoom »