Salvation South

They’ll always disappoint you, the saying goes. This is a story about how the rule doesn’t apply…if you have the right kind of hero.

For fifty years, Linda Strom has ministered to women in prison, helping them reenter society and rebuild their lives. She gives the credit to God and Karla Faye Tucker, who was put to death in 1998 for killing two people with a pickaxe.

Sometimes, when we’re gutted by loss, we go ahead and sing about it. This Mississippi poet does just that.

In this poem from Asheville, North Carolina, a chain of images reveals how our minds sometimes play tricks on us—and, at other times, show us exactly what we need to see.

In 1998, Atlanta author Mark Beaver’s father asked him to write to the governor of Texas and call on him to stay the execution Karla Faye Tucker—a question that left him to ponder the tug of war between mercy and justice.

A lost dog brings Janie Doyle face-to-face with her peculiar neighbors, who live only three blocks away—but in a world that’s entirely different from Janie’s.

In summer’s swelter, consider the blessing of ice and the consequences of technology.

Punishment and glory–it’s all manifested right out there in the yard.

Join Salvation South in an intimate conversation with the prize-winning Alabama poet Jacqueline Allen Trimble.

The poems of South Carolina’s Ray McManus explore how boys become men—in ways healthy and unhealthy—perhaps better than any poet in the South.

Your willingness to be a jackass will never make you a man. Writers like South Carolina’s Ray McManus are shredding the futile and stupid myths about what exactly makes a Southern man.

One time and place nourishes the next, just like your broken eggshells feed your garden.