Salvation South

After a youth full of pain, the Alabama musician and artist creates joyous works that help us understand our region.

A South Carolina mother wrestles with the legacy she’ll leave her four children. Because the real truth about faith, politics and shifting values is complicated.

Atlanta journalist Jim Auchmutey interviewed President Carter many times during his career. The most memorable happened 17 years ago in Jimmy and Rosalynn’s kitchen.

As cooked in the Plains, Georgia, kitchen of Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter in 2006.

A Georgia poet moves furiously up and down our hills, into our winter winds and through the baskets of various apples laid out at picking time.

As more people read Salvation South, more writers want to contribute. Want to help us by reading submissions?

As he drove back home, the Confederate monument on Stone Mountain loomed above him and forced him to reckon anew with the myths surrounding the Confederate general.

Trips to Spartanburg’s landmark Beacon Drive-In were a beloved ritual. But in election years, the wrong politician’s face on a cup of sweet tea could ruin the whole day.

The Tennessee poet offers us verses about light and dark, smoke and mist, and riptides and droplets.

If you come home to Atlanta, you have to look hard at that big old rock mountain.

You might never have heard of the poet Annie Woodford. She’s singing the truths of mountain folks in a gorgeous voice that never flinches. It’s time you listen up.

On the other side of the world, James Seawel met a fellow American, Benjamin Adams, who told him stories of the Civil Rights Movement. Adams would never call himself a hero, but Seawel knows he was one.