Perhaps the appeal, to us twenty- and thirty-somethings going about life like it's one long home-ec class, is that georgic chores like composting food scraps or butchering pigs are just beyond our memory's reach, but not so far beyond it that we can't imagine them. The distance makes them perfect focal points in our digitized pastoral.

A new literary prize has been concocted in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Soul food is rich—not just in taste, pleasure, comfort, but also in history. And yet, as documentary filmmaker Byron Hurt asks in Soul Food Junkies (2012), is this legendary culinary culture also poisonous?

Once you reach the Tomales Bay, you’ll be mere minutes from one of the most pristine shellfish-eating spots in—dare I say it?—the country. You’ll want to keep in mind those windy roads as you slurp down raw oysters, grilled clams, and bottles of BYO wine and beer. It’s a long road back, and you don’t want to get sick

“Liquor is art you can drink,” says Jedd Haas, the master behind Atelier Vie, a spirits studio where artisans collectively workshop the “water of life.”