There's good reason to suspect that two short story collections nestled in Appalachia and rural Southern Indiana and written by male thirty-somethings will surely include plenty of spilt bourbon, calloused fists cracking bloodied skulls, lustful and quick sex, guns within arm's reach, and enough guilt and rage to fuel many haunted lifetimes. Charles Dodd White's Sinners of Sanction County and Frank Bill's Crimes in Southern Indiana could be literary neighbors, but it's doubtful these characters would ever cross paths in a real or imagined life.

BOOKS WE LOVE: In which OA editors and friends gush about some books (old and new) that have knocked our respective socks off.

I've been living in Atlanta too long. I hardly ever hear of anyone having a pineapple sandwich anymore. Growing up in Alabama the pineapple sandwich was a staple in school lunch sacks and church picnics. Your mama could use sliced pineapple or crushed. I usually opted for crushed if I wasn't concerned about soggy bread or pineapple juice cascading down my elbows. The sooner you ate your crushed pineapple sandwich the safer. However, if you were going to start a food fight, it had better be soggy.

Cooking a meal from Sheri Castle's THE NEW SOUTHERN GARDEN COOKBOOK.

He thought he'd died. While rolling down Chicago's South Side in a convertible, top down on a hot July night, Muddy Waters heard his bottleneck blues "I Can't Be Satisfied" coursing through the streets once again, this time from "way upstairs somewhere." What was actually just the soundtrack to a Chicago house party escaping through an open window, high up above, was mistaken as a siren song from the afterlife.

We're excited to announce our ongoing invovlement with the ever-growing Little Rock Film Festival, beginning June 1st with the premiere of Arkansas native Harry Thomason's feature, The Last Ride—a film reimagining the final days of country-music legend Hank Williams.

Clark was heralded in some critical circles as "The New John Prine," who had been hailed, in his turn, as "The New Bob Dylan." There were a few similarities. Songs like "Desperadoes Waiting for a Train" had the empathy and compassion for other folks' lives that was a trait of early Prine and "Rita Ballou" had the same dry humor. His Carter-influenced guitar playing was vaguely reminiscent of Prine. But he was obviously Guy Clark from the get-go and he was good enough that didn't have to emulate anyone.

I first heard of Todd Snider in 1998. He started a one-hour episode of Austin City Limits with Ryan Adams' then-band Whiskeytown, and it's a shame it's not available on DVD, because it was something to see. Snider was working with a band called The Nervous Wrecks then with Will Kimbrough playing lead guitar, and they were electric in every sense of the word. It was like being in the middle of a fireworks show.

Coverage from this summer's Southern theater festivals.

"What's done cannot be undone."