For Christmas, my mother gave me a book called The Storied South. It’s a collection of interviews, conversations, and excerpts from lectures compiled by southern folklorist William Ferris. I’ve been reading bits and pieces each day. It’s the sort of book that’s good to read in bits and pieces. Today, I was particularly struck by this observation from Margaret …
In Ron Rash’s 2008 novel Serena, he creates a female character who is so ambitious and ruthless that she seems devoid of moral considerations. It is a stunning accomplishment in an era when readers clamor for likability. Frankly, I think likability is overrated in fiction. I believe the likability complaint is mostly used as a way to dismiss …
I write fiction about working class and lower middle class people in the south. It’s not a popular choice. Readers don’t seem to know what to do with my characters. I don’t blame them. It’s not what they’ve come to expect from books set in the south. Most southern fiction tends to portray societal extremes: the …
The image of construction workers hooting and wolf-whistling at women is an old stereotype, but I grew up around men who worked construction and it doesn’t fit my experience. My father and my uncles and my cousins were ironworkers and welders and electricians. They didn’t make crass comments about women. Daddy was outraged when men called women names or …
I taught a high school class this morning in the Denver suburbs. It’s homecoming week and the whole school was decked out in black and gold. In the middle of all this manufactured enthusiasm, I told the students to pay attention to those things that truly light a fire in them, to be aware of the ideas …
I went for a run yesterday morning. There is nothing newsworthy about this; I go for a run most days. Usually I run in Colorado, where the morning air is cool and crisp and the early morning sky is clear and blue. Now I am in Mississippi, and the sky is blue enough but not the same …
In Dispatches from Pluto Richard Grant tells the story of moving from New York City to live in an old farmhouse in the Mississippi Delta. For some reason, the book was shelved in the travel section at my local bookstore, but it’s not a travel guide. Instead it’s part humorous memoir and part cultural anthropology. Grant, who is …
We’re barely past Labor Day and Colorado is making a decisive swing toward fall. We’ll have a few more warm days, but the morning temps have turned decidedly nippy. Most Tuesday mornings throughout the summer, I attend an early outdoor yoga class at a local park. We gather at 6:30 a.m. to stretch and balance and …