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Subjects: Interviews

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 »

Interview

Finding New Orleans in Zululand

by Jennifer Atkins, Millicent Johnnie

“I love when I hear the sound of resistance, how the drum informs how people navigate space. The body reveals what’s happening in society.” Home. That was what I felt when I first met Millicent Johnnie almost twenty years ago. We laughed too loudly to care, talked about food, and shared memories from our Louisiana »

Essay

A Search for Rural Justice

An Interview with Charles Thompson

by Jill Kiedaisch

Charlie Thompson will launch GOING OVER HOME at Flyleaf Books (Chapel Hill, NC) on Tuesday, November 11, in conversation with SOUTHERN CULTURES art director & deputy editor Emily Wallace. Details below. Charles D. Thompson, Jr. was born in southwestern Virginia into an extended family of small farmers. As he came of age he witnessed the »

Inteview

We’re Talking Human Lives Here

Jan Rader in conversation with Elaine McMillion Sheldon

by Jan Rader, Elaine McMillion Sheldon

“Open your eyes, talk to us. We’ll tell you what we did wrong. We’ll tell you what we did right.” Jan Rader: There’s probably not a day goes by that somebody doesn’t come up to me and tell me a story. They come up and they say, “Thank you.” But what they really want is »

Interview

What I’m Doing Is for Them

Rosa Ortez-Cruz, interviewed by Lori Fernald Khamala

by Rosa Ortez-Cruz, Lori Fernald Khamala

“At first, I thought three months was forever. I counted ninety-six days; “Oh God, that’s insane!” But imagine, now, I’ve already been here for more than four hundred days.” I have been living in this church for more than a year now, and it hasn’t been easy at all. It is exhausting, for me and »

Interview

To Talk About Power Is to Talk About Shame

by Janisse Ray, Amy Wright

AMY WRIGHT: Do you consider yourself a radical, meaning that you favor drastic political, economic, or social reform? JANISSE RAY: There’s no denying that I am a radical and that I favor far-reaching and extreme reform on many levels. We are at a place globally that requires drastic action. We need immediate action to mitigate »

Interview

Carving a Path For Those Who Will Follow

Carving A Path For Those Who Will Follow

by Stacey Abrams, Valerie Boyd

VALERIE BOYD: Everybody I’ve talked with, when I’ve told them that I’m interviewing Stacey Abrams, they’re so excited—and especially Black women. Every time I tell a Black woman I’m interviewing you, they get a dreamy look in their eyes that’s usually reserved for Michelle Obama. Well, maybe Oprah. But now there are three Black women »

Interview

Gird Up, Get Up, and Grow Up

by Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, Tim Tyson

REV. DR. WILLIAM J. BARBER II: My father . . . said, “When you feel overwhelmed by your moment, go back and read the moments that people faced that are worse than yours. What courage and hope and truth did they find in that moment?” I go back and I read Henry McNeal Turner and »

Interview

Build It Together

In Conversation with Phil Freelon & Pierce Freelon

by Southern Cultures

In 2017, the Center for the Study of the American South hosted Philip Freelon & Pierce Freelon in conversation for the Charleston Lecture in Southern Affairs. We were grateful to have witnessed Philip Freelon’s generosity and deep humanity as he and his son discussed creativity, community, and the artistry of architecture (among other topics) in »

Photo Essay

The Spaces We Inherit

by Oliver Clasper

“These landscapes hold the remnants of five thousand distant voices.” If all photographs are abandonings, as the American critic Henry Allen once wrote, then how might we view photographs of lynching sites? Located for the most part in the geographic margins and the shadows of our collective memory, these landscapes hold the remnants of five »

Interview

What Fired Me Up

by Brendan Greaves

Save the Date: Tish Hinojosa will join us the Nasher Museum of Art on November 1st to launch the Music & Protest Issue. More details below. San Antonio native Tish Hinojosa recently spoke with Brendan Greaves, guest editor of the Music & Protest Issue, about her long career as a writer and performer blending border, »

Interview

“What Music Does”

Si Kahn, In His Own Words

by Si Kahn, Brendan Greaves

“I’m in my fifty-second year as an organizer—civil rights, environment, labor, community. You know, if it moves, I try to organize it.” I’m walking down the hall in the Library of Congress, wondering what I’m going to do, and I see a sign that says, “Archive of Folk Music.” I went in the really raggedy-ass »