Three Decades and Counting...
In a shrinking media landscape, we’re doubling down on stories that make you feel seen, stirred, and sometimes gloriously uncomfortable. Support our work at just $10/month and help champion Southern storytellers!
In a shrinking media landscape, we’re doubling down on stories that make you feel seen, stirred, and sometimes gloriously uncomfortable. Support our work at just $10/month and help champion Southern storytellers!
In the Spring 2019 issue, several contributors confront symbols weighted by history—antebellum architecture, Confederate monuments, the American flag—and their processing is instructive. As Jennifer Ho writes: “I cannot claim to be an American and only claim the parts I like.”
Plus: a striking art portfolio by Trenton Doyle Hancock, introduced by novelist Maurice Carlos Ruffin. Our 2018-19 Jeff Baskin Fellow, Micah Fields, explores industrial Houston. Mesha Maren on LGBTQ identity in her native West Virginia. And the final installment of Chris Offutt’s column “Cooking with Chris.”
Editor’s Letter: Clash of Symbols, by Eliza Borné
Claiming Dixie?, by Jennifer Ho
Four poems, by Ashley M. Jones
Willie’s Other Voice, by Jonathan Bernstein
The Camel Experiment, by Sasha von Oldershausen
Some People Stay, by Rachel Louise Martin
Flag Code, by Karen Good Marable
Local Fare: Oaxaca Wreck, by John T. Edge
Performing Arts
A story by Susan Choi
West Virginia in Transition
A ten-year age gap reveals radically different experiences for queer youth in Appalachia
by Mesha Maren
Enter the Moundverse
Art portfolio: Trenton Doyle Hancock’s ecstatic devotion to resistance
Text by Maurice Carlos Ruffin
Gusher
A personal portrait of oil-stained Houston
by Micah Fields
A Slender Wage
A story by Kevin Wilson
The House of Myth
On the architecture of white supremacy
by C. Morgan Babst
Vessel of Antiquity
Influence, invention, and the legacy of Leon Redbone
by Megan Pugh
Cooking with Chris:
Salt and Prepper
by Chris Offutt
Art by: Jhuma Das, Peyton Fulford, Jonathan Traviesa, Tommy Kha, Deana Lawson, Michael Harrington, Nine François, Dominic Lippillo, Thornton Dial Sr., John Langmore, Ilana Panich-Linsman, Meg Elizabeth Ward, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Micah Fields, Milton Carter, Charles Gaines, Carrie Mae Weems, Magdalena Solé, Arthur Usherson, Allison Stewart
Cover: “Awakening” by Jhuma Das | @JDasArt, photographed by Milli Apelgren