“Art is an artifact, you know? Once you assume that every single language in literature is a created language, is an artificial language, you feel free to just include whatever is there around you.” Translation is a double form of correspondence between me and Lisa. First, there is the near-daily—or, sometimes, multiple-times-a-day—correspondence we’ve maintained during »
“Moving through the world as a writer is, I think, an experience of moving through the world with your eyes open to observe. Charlie Lovett: The Correspondent is your debut novel, [but] it was not your first attempt at writing a novel. Can you tell us just a little bit about the road that your »
“That’s always been part of the mission of my work—to write about the sheer breadth and wonder and scope of our southern lives.” Leoneda Inge: I understand that this book came at a critical time for you, health-wise. Was writing this novel a healing experience for you? Tayari Jones: I feel like this novel really »
It was a two-hour drive from New Orleans to Hattiesburg, Mississippi, in the sweltering heat of summer 2024, when I first met Dr. Tammy Greer. Just the day before, I had taken an early morning walk to Nanih Bvlbancha at Lafitte Greenway, a project she helped bring to life alongside a collaborative group of artists »
The following is an excerpt from Country Queers: A Love Letter (Haymarket Books, 2024) and has been lightly edited to appear on Southern Cultures in collaboration with the Queer South issue. Early in the spring of 2014, I borrowed a neighbor’s video camera and recorded myself, with my ducks hanging out in the background, rambling »
“I realized that what fascinated me went beyond the historic record to the lifelines—indeed, the life stories of those who made and continue to make queer Atlanta.” I moved to Atlanta from Mississippi in July of 2011 to attend graduate school. In the fall of 2018, I began to teach at nearby Oxford College. My »
Folklorist Michelle Lanier spoke with artist Allison Janae Hamilton about her new body of work Celestine, recently on view at Marianne Boesky Gallery in New York, and connections to home and the Black South. This conversation has been edited and condensed for publication. Michelle Lanier: I’m thinking about this concept of newness. And I was »
by Marwan Pleasant,
Natalie Chanin,
Olivia Ware Terenzio
“I’m the Flag Boy. I love the position. I embrace it a lot. It is just like a whole character. It’s a spirit that takes over you on Mardi Gras Day.” Marwan Pleasant was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, where he grew up masking as a Mardi Gras Indian in the Golden Eagles tribe. Pleasant »
“If this was truly Student Craft and it was meant to reflect the students’ work and they were going to find joy in the process, they had to have some ownership over what was happening. So, we started with the Rainbow Baby Blanket.” Berea College, located in the foothills of Appalachian Kentucky, was founded in »
Collecting and Connecting for a Sustainable Future
by Rebecca Burgess,
Natalie Chanin
“When one region is down, we support them, when we’re down, we receive that support.” Fibershed is a non-profit that fosters regional networks, with a stated focus to build local textile economies, grow climate-beneficial agriculture, and support education and advocacy. Project Threadways started the Southeast Fibershed affiliate to connect growers, producers, and makers across the »
“Home may include the earth, may include the space around it, but it is far more expansive thanthat.” ON JULY 4, TWO LONGTIME FRIENDS and former colleagues in the department of English at Duke University sat down to dialogue about visions of home in African American cultural life and imagination. Prompted by guest editors Blair LM »
Bernie Herman’s Living Archive on the Eastern Shore
by Katy Clune
The air inside my red and white cooler was still warm from the car and the sun when I opened it on the kitchen counter. I stuck my face inside and inhaled fresh-picked figs from Virginia’s Eastern Shore. They smelled grassy and sweet, of caramel with just a touch of sour. The fruit—grape-sized to large »
Interview
