This limited-run poster of our latest issue cover features “My butterfly year” by Dianna Settles, a Vietnamese-American artist from Atlanta. Her paintings trace “relationships to nature, autonomy, self-sufficiency, protest, work, and the solitude necessary for being amongst others.” Supplies are limited so grab this collector’s item today!

SUBSCRIBE Shop Donate Login

Magazine


Issue 49, Spring 2005

Southern Food Vol. I — guest-edited by John T. Edge

“What should emerge from this bacchanal is a sense of how and why what we eat and drink matters.” — John T. Edge

Featuring a previously unpublished essay by Carson McCullers. “Odes” by Padgett Powell, Molly Giles, Donald Harington, Steve Almond, Yusef Komunyakaa, Joshua Foer, and more. Notes by Duncan Murrell and Pete Wells. Essays by Gary Hawkins, Lolis Eric Elie, David Ramsey, Barbara Ensrud, and more.

Other contributors include Debbie Fleming Caffery, Blair Hobbs, Jonathan Reynolds, Anne Mendelson, and others.







COLUMNS & DEPARTMENTS


Guest Editor’s Box:
A Worthy Cause
Writing—and fighting—about food.
by John T. Edge

Messages from the Front
Cliff’s Meat Market, Squirrel hunting, and more
with Wells Tower, Keith O'Brien, Lawrence Wilson, John T. Edge, Jeff Baker 

Meditations:
The Endurance of Southern Food
by John Egerton

Meditations:
Sitting Down to Eat
by Bernard LaFayette, Jr.

Gone Off Up North:
One Man's Fried Meat
by Roy Blount, Jr.

In Florida:
Spanish Dixie
by Diane Roberts

Field Notes:
Animal Farming
by Pete Wells

Field Notes:
Pig Sins: A Love Story
by Duncan Murrell

Field Notes:
Strange Fruit
by Ben Phelan

Meditations:
Free Okra
by Siddhartha Mitter

Sense of Place:
Sugarcane Harvesting (Southwest Louisana)
Photographs by Debbie Fleming Caffery

Horticulture:
Devil's Claw
by William Woys Weaver

The Future:
Hola, Arkansas!
by Edward Carpenter

In South Carolina:
Lowcountry Gold Rush
by John Martin Taylor

Cookbooks:
Haute Clementine
by Sara Roahen

Cookbooks:
The Black Presence
by Lolis Eric Elie

Writing on Writing:
Glossy South
by Anne Mendelson

Writing on Writing:
Edible Complex
by Jonathan Reynolds

Writing on Writing:
Faulkner's Taste for Wine
by Barbara Ensrud

Dealer’s Choice:
The Other Appetite
by Hal Crowther

The Moviegoer:
Just One More
Larry Brown, 1951–2004
by Gary Hawkins

The Moviegoer:
Putting a Bottom Under It
by Tom Rankin

Southern Scenes:
Marshall, North Carolina
Photograph by Debbie Fleming Caffery

FEATURES 


Cooks in the Kitchen
Celebrity Chefs Reveal Their Southern Food Passions
Interviews by Emily Witt

The Great Eaters of Georgia
A Previously Unpublished Essay
by Carson McCullers

Good Times
by Lewis Nordan

Through the Past, (Sort of ) Darkly
by Paul Reyes

Some Like It Extra Hot
Adventures in masochistic dining at Prince's Hot Chicken Shack
by David Ramsey

Everybody Loves the Colonel
How fried chicken saved my family
by Silas House

Odes


Ice, by Padgett Powell

Arkansas Eats, by Molly Giles

Chicken & Dumplings, by Donald Harington

Figs, by Eugene Walter

Manna, by Andrew Hudgins

Cotton Candy, by Steve Almond

Lowcountry Boil, by James Alan McPherson

Raccoon, by Yusef Komunyakaa

New Orleans Hamburgers, by Brett Anderson

Boiled Peanuts, by Michael Griffith

Your Dekalb Farmers Market, by Joshua Foer

Hangover Cures, by George Singleton

Buttermilk, by John Fleer

Chicken-Fried Steak, by Dennis Covington

Feeding Strays, by George Kirius

Raw Meats, by Dr. Sammy Ray 
As told to Robb Walsh

Praise Wine, by John Simpkins

POETRY


Unfilled Desire, by Andrew Hudgins

Otis, His Forbidden 'Cue: Helotes, Texas, by Jake Adam York

Falling for My Husband, by Blair Hobbs

Asparagus, by Marck L. Beggs

 

Cover: "Stop and Eat" by Allison V. Smith.