A Brighter, Broader South

We didn’t really figure, back when we launched Salvation South almost two years ago, that we would attract so many essayists and poets. After all, my reputation as an editor was built around reported journalism. But somehow, the essayists and poets—who tell their stories of the South in deeply personal and highly individual way—are giving you, our readers, a fuller picture of our region.

A publication like ours isn’t designed to hit you with lots of little tidbits all at once, so you can get a quick sense of the South by learning a little about of lot of things that are happening. We give you three new works every week (plus this little column of mine), and gradually, over time, we paint a newer, brighter, broader picture of our region. 

Salvation South has become, by sheer happenstance, something of a refuge for storytellers of every stripe. The No. 1 meaning of that word in Webster’s is “shelter or protection from danger or distress.” 

This week, we have poems from the southern Appalachian mountains of northern Georgia inspired by a ninety-year-old woman known to her family as “Mema.” (It’s one of dozens of names Southerners have for “grandmother.”) We have the beginning of an occasional series we’re calling “The Southern Reader’s Travelogue,” detailing road-trip destinations that will bring you up close and personal to the home ground of legendary Southern writers. And I’m glad to be reunited this week with Drs. Adam Jordan and Todd Hawley, who wrote regularly about education for me at that bitter old publication I used to edit. It’s been a rough year for public-school teachers so far, but there are many teachers who still teach with great joy. Todd and Adam introduce us to two such folks—who also happen to have a two-piece rock band.

Love thy neighbor, y’all.