Salvation South

No mother tongue is as rich as the Southern one. Our words are musical, and poetry expresses them with soul-shaking force. Annie Woodford celebrates the songs we say.

When the bulldozers topple the trees and the owls and the field mice and the feral cats are gone, who will remember?

Three verses that take us from the gorges of western North Carolina to that mess on the front porch.

Salvation South kicks off a month-long celebration of Southern poetry with a soaring essay from Annie Woodford.

Daniel Wallace’s brother-in-law was his hero. But in the journals he left behind, Wallace discovered the darkness that claimed his idol’s life.

Daniel Wallace interprets two pages from the revealing, long-lost journals of his brother-in-law, William Nealy.

Chapter 1, excerpted from “This Isn’t Going to End Well: The True Story of a Man I Thought I Knew”

Daniel Wallace is one of the South’s greatest writers, and to dive into his most recent volume is to reckon with how hard it is to make peace with yourself and with others.

The Smithsonian’s “Biography of a Phantom” answers countless questions — and raises countless more — about Robert Johnson, the Mississippi bluesman who legendarily sold his soul to the devil.

Sometimes, you get a treat from the universe just exactly when you need one. And sometimes, if your stars align, it comes glazed with sugar.

He was singing a song lamenting the murder of George Floyd when a woman who had stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, said she didn’t agree. Not at all.

We welcome the renowned music writer Don McLeese to Salvation South with a story about the biggest legend in the history of Southern music.