Hammer in Her Hand
At 76, Atlanta’s Beverly “Guitar” Watkins still lives for the blues.
Oxford American
Fiction Pick of the Week: "Do Not Save the Ferocious, Save the Tender"
A shipwreck, a mythical creature.
The Road Goes on Forever
Looking for the ghosts of the Allman Brothers Band in Macon.
The Search for Blind Lemon
The producer of Big Star’s Third and piano player on ‘Wild Horses’ recounts a life of music in Memphis.
Crossing Over
The life of a trans woman on the border between El Paso and Juárez.
Eff Scott
On what’s in a name.
Fiction Pick of the Week: "Making Love"
A convergence of sex, fears, and family drama.
"Beside the bed the baby monitor flashed, as it had been doing all night, a blue light racing up and down to accompany the sounds: breathing, snoring, faint clicking, the mewl of one or another of the cats. If Angela held it to her ear she would also hear the ticking of the mantel clock. These new monitors! So much more sophisticated than those of yore. Nineteen years ago, when last she’d tuned into one, the monitor would occasionally pick up the cell phone call of some stranger in a passing car, some weird adult voice suddenly blaring from the baby’s room."
Long Way Home
Memories of her father and her time in Tennessee.
Walking the Tornado Line
Following a storm that took 72 lives in Alabama.
Trash Food
The complicated class politics of American eating habits.
Though the Heavens Fall
On old Texas newspapers and a pair of men who shaped the story of civil rights.
That Drifting Place
An ode to Roy Orbison.
Portraits From a Life Shaped By Music
"Here’s God’s truth about it: being a groupie wasn’t about sex, it was about access. I wanted to live in the stage life, dazzled by color and sound, constantly in motion, driven by excitement and power, loved by the stage lights, part of the story."
No Twang of Conscience Whatever
“‘Have you ever killed anybody?’”
A Place to Root
Walking the East Tennessee woods with a Carol, aka “The Forest Granny,” a woman who lives off the land.
Sky Burial
Meet the people decomposing on a body farm.
Scout's Honor
A former Eagle Scout attends the National Boy Scout Jamboree, aka Jambo, held at a brand-new, $100 million scouting wonderland called The Summit.
Old Terror, New Hearts
A trip to a Louisiana leper colony.
Hail Dayton
The legacy of the Scopes trial on one Tennesse town.
Love and Death in the Cape Fear Serpentarium
Some passions are more dangerous than others.
Fire Behavior
What really happened in the West, Texas fertilizer plant explosion?
That Chop on the Upbeat
Investigating ska’s moment of conception.
Dear Charlie
The rocky career and enduring appeal of country legend Charlie Rich, “the missing link between Elvis Presley and Ray Charles.”
Carl the Raping Goat Saves Christmas
A Southern defense attorney's complicated family Christmas, told through the point of view of his child.
"Every Christmas Daddy throws a 'Taking the Christ Out of Christmas' party and invites everybody. Everybody loves my Daddy except for a small percentage that want to take their revenge, so it's lots of people, old clients, other criminal defense attorneys, Rey Mason from the feed store, everybody. No Jesus cause it makes Daddy angry and both his hands already broke."
Make It Scream, Make It Burn
An analysis of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men and Cotton Tenants, the original manuscript.
