Three Years of Southern Stories, and a Dream of Change
As Salvation South marks three years of publication, editor Chuck Reece looks back at a stellar lineup of established Southern authors and fresh voices.
Salvation South sprang to life on this very weekend three years ago. Since then, we have published more than 500 stories, essays, and poems that speak to what it means to be a Southerner in the twenty-first century.
In our first three years, there have been two big surprises.
The first is how quickly so many of the South’s finest writers approached us, looking to publish their work in Salvation South. What an honor it has been to welcome authors and poets such as Ron Rash, Silas House, Mary Gauthier, John T. Edge, Cynthia Tucker, Daniel Wallace, Frank X Walker, George Singleton, Jacqueline Allen Trimble, Maurice Carlos Ruffin, Frye Gaillard, Michael Farris Smith, Ashley M. Jones, and Holly Gleason into our pages.
The second has been watching writers young and old, whose work isn’t as widely known, find broader audiences here in Salvation South. We’re especially proud of the fiction we’ve published by Will Maguire, Carli Moses, Grace Buckner, and Jean K. Dowdy, essays and journalism from Sybil Rosen, Deb Bowen, Justin Cox, Lindsey DeLoach Jones, Chrissie Anderson Peters, and Diana Keough, and poems from fresh voices like Eleni Karelis, Leia Bradley, and Elisheva Fox.
We’re grateful to all these writers and to the hundreds of others whose work we’ve published.
For the last two years, we’ve celebrated our birthday by launching a month-long membership drive. But we’re going to delay that campaign until sometime next year. That said, if you go into this Thanksgiving week with any sense of gratitude for what Salvation South has brought to you as a reader and a lover of this region that shaped you, we’d ask you please to consider joining the Salvation South Family Circle. In return for your financial support, you’ll get a weekly early look at our “cover story,” the occasional invite to exclusive members-only online events, like Q&A sessions with our authors, and a standing discount in the Salvation South Store—not just on our gear like T-shirts and tea towels and stickers, but also on our monthly online “circles,” in which writers and poets gather to create new writing with prompts provided by our team.
In times like these, here in late 2024, Sam Cooke's dream of change might feel like it’s fading, but it is not. It survives among all of us who know in our hearts that the color of our skin matters no more than the color of our hair or eyes.
To those of you who decide to join our Family Circle this Thanksgiving week, we will certainly be thankful for you. And even if you cannot make that commitment this week, we’ll stay say a few words of thanks this Thursday because you’ve come to the “house party” we dreamed of creating when we launched this publication three years ago.
Back then, we told our earliest readers and supporters we envisioned a big party filled with people who shared Sam Cooke’s dream: that a change was gonna come. That late great Mississippi soul singer wrote “A Change Is Gonna Come” back in 1963. Cooke wrote that song after he and his wife and three bandmates were denied rooms—even though they had reservations—at the Holiday Inn North in Shreveport, Louisiana, according to Cooke’s biographer, Peter Guralnick. (Guralnick will be a guest on an upcoming episode of the Salvation South Deluxe podcast.) It was just one of hundreds of times Cooke was denied lodging or food because of the color of his skin. But after that night, Cooke said the song came to him fully formed, as if in a dream. And he lived long enough before he was killed in late 1964 to see his creation become an anthem for the Civil Rights Movement.
In times like these, here in late 2024, that dream of change might feel like it’s fading, but it is not. It survives among all of us who know in our hearts that the color of our skin matters no more than the color of our hair or eyes. We hope that Salvation South has become, for you, one little place in which people who hold on to that dream can come together, swap stories, renew their spirits, and find some hope.
Salvation South Family Circle Monthly Recurring Memberships
Sneak peeks at stories, members-only invitations, and a standing Salvation South Store discount.
10% Store discount
15% Store discount
20% Store discount
25% Store discount
Salvation South Family Circle Annual Recurring Memberships
Sneak peeks at stories, members-only invitations, and a standing Salvation South Store discount.
10% Store discount
15% Store discount
20% Store discount
25% Store discount
About the author
Chuck Reece is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Salvation South, the weekly web magazine you're reading right now. He was the founding editor of The Bitter Southerner. He grew up in the north Georgia mountains in a little town called Ellijay.
- Chuck Reecehttps://www.salvationsouth.com/author/chuck_reece/
- Chuck Reecehttps://www.salvationsouth.com/author/chuck_reece/
- Chuck Reecehttps://www.salvationsouth.com/author/chuck_reece/
- Chuck Reecehttps://www.salvationsouth.com/author/chuck_reece/