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Issue 24, November / December 1998

“Whatever a soul is, I think literature does better than most ministers, priests, rabbis, or imams in creating a kind of stillness and watchfulness and attentiveness, and to me that is soulmaking.” — Will Blythe

An essay by Joy Williams. Photography by Adam Shepner and F.S. McKnight. An Interview with Will Blythe. Fiction by Ron Carlson. Michael Griffith on the Orangeburg Massacre.

Other contributors include John T. Edge, Chris Offutt, Tom Piazza, Sven Birkerts, and more.

COLUMNS & DEPARTMENTS

Dealer's Choice
by Hal Crowther

Waving not Drowning
by Julia Reed

Gone off up North
by Roy Blount Jr.

Shooting George Wallace
History or entertainment? The Wallace camp reacts to John Frankenheimer's Emmy Award–winning docudrama.
by Daniel Paul Simmons III

Photography:
Our Junkyard
by Adam Shemper

Yankee's Corner:
Pure Southern Weddingness
Looking for an uncynical moment of bliss.
by David Updike

Essay:
Uncanny the Singing That Comes from Certain Husks
Why one writer writes
by Joy Williams

Photography:
The Studio Photography Of F.S. McNight

History:
Home Truths
The Orangeburg Massacre remembered
by Michael Griffith

Southern Cuisine
Smoked & Fried by the Roadside
The town Calvin Trillin forgot.
by John T. Edge

Music:
The Art of the Delta Blues
by Tom Piazza

Bloodlines:
A Melungeon Gathering
Embracing ethnicity in Appalachia.
by Chris Offutt

Books:
From Her Rooted Place
The secret voodoo of family life in Eudora Welty's fiction.
by Sven Birkerts

POETRY

The Village in the Lake
by A. E. Stallings

Joseph Bolton: An Appreciative Despair
by Donald Justice

Poems
by Joseph Bolton

SHORT STORY

The Ordinary Son
Growing up amid geniuses when you're not one.
by Ron Carlson

SOUTHERN GALLERY

An Interview with Jane Mullen

An Interview with Will Blythe

Cover: "Grand Chenier, Louisiana, September 5, 1998" by Debbie Flmeing Caffery