At 18, in Damascus, Karim Shamsi-Basha watched "To Kill a Mockingbird" and crossed an ocean to the America he saw in it. Mary Badham, who played Scout, and Cecilia Peck, Gregory's daughter because friends on the movie set as children. Their new new play will soon premiere in Birmingham.

‘Growing Up With Atticus’: Scout Comes Home to Alabama

‘Growing Up With Atticus’ reunites Mary Badham and Cecilia Peck onstage in Birmingham. A Syrian-born Alabaman asks what ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ still owes him.

salvationsouth.com

Worry about your own damned yard. We loved publishing this one.

Kendall Dunkelberg@kdunkelberg.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Wildness ss a form of resistance: A haibun of mine, celebrating wildness in everyday environments, is online today at Salvation South. Read iand/or listen to me read it. @salvationsouth.com www.salvationsouth.com/overgrown-ya...

She helped renew the Voting Rights Act in 1982, sat at Fannie Lou Hamer’s kitchen table in Ruleville, and became the first black woman hired onto the tenure track at the University of Mississippi law school. At 77, she has chosen her ground, and it is the same ground.

Black Southerners Who Stayed: “Why I Live in Mississippi”

Black Southerners who stayed changed Mississippi. At 77, Barbara Y. Phillips, who sat at Fannie Lou Hamer's kitchen table, explains why the state is home.

salvationsouth.com

PINCH ME! I’m up on @salvationsouth.com alongside southern royalty today. Thank you SO MUCH to the amazing @chuckreece.bsky.social who is ALWAYS working hard to lift up voices and put excellent literature front and center. @kentuckypress.bsky.social

good news--I've got two new poems up today at @salvationsouth.com. Thanks to poetry editor Andy Fogle! www.salvationsouth.com/marianne-wor...

Marianne Worthington Poems: Blue Sheets & Seasoned Sycamore

Two new Worthington poems fold mother memory into Appalachian elegy for her late mentor, Jeff Daniel Marion: blue sheets, a felled sycamore.

salvationsouth.com

What is the song of the South in 2026? We're pretty sure several of them are on this guy's new album. Read the conversation our editor, @chuckreece.bsky.social, had with @nathanevansfox.bsky.social. Fave lyric: "When the lord comes back, the rich get scared." www.salvationsouth.com/nathan-evans...

Nathan Evans Fox on 'Heirloom' and Moral Inheritance

Nathan Evans Fox on 'Heirloom': his late dad's work jacket, his Mamaw's open screen door, and a hillbilly tradition that refuses to be anybody's joke.

salvationsouth.com

This is a Southern thing: how we feel when the place that raised us disappears. This month’s @salvationsouth.com Deluxe podcast with @tracytherealone.bsky.social and poet Annie Woodford. I’m awful proud of these women (and of this episode).

Deluxe: When the Place You Come From Is Gone

Podcast Episode · Salvation South · May 20 · 29m

podcasts.apple.com

Salvation South @salvationsouth.com ⭐ is accepting submissions through Duosuma. #WritingCommunity

Featured on Duosuma: Salvation South

Salvation South @salvationsouth.com ⭐ is accepting submissions through Duosuma. #WritingCommunity

duotrope.com

Read “Echoes of Grace, Threats of Erasure,” Kevin’s exclusive essay for us about how writing the book changed him.

Mother Emanuel Charleston History of Resilience

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Kevin Sack on his ten-year dive into centuries of resistance and forgiveness at Charleston’s Mother Emanuel.

salvationsouth.com

Salvation South@salvationsouth.com · 5mo ago

Congratulations to our contributor Kevin Sack, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in nonfiction.

“Mother Emanuel” is a book that will stand for the ages, not only as the definitive account of a massacre drawn by hatred and racism, but also as a history of the Black church in America….

Salvation South@salvationsouth.com · 5mo ago

Congratulations to our contributor Kevin Sack, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in nonfiction.

Congratulations to our contributor Kevin Sack, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in nonfiction.

Pulitzer Prizes 2026: A Guide to the Winning Books and Finalists

nytimes.com

Congrats to @salvationsouth.com contributor James McWilliams—a Pulitzer Prize’Finalist www.nytimes.com/shared/v1/cl...

Pulitzer Prizes 2026: A Guide to the Winning Books and Finalists

nytimes.com

We agree.

asj626.bsky.social@asj626.bsky.social · 8mo ago

@salvationsouth.com This is a really important piece that needs to be spread far and wide. Please read.

The Salvation South team believes this is one of the finest short stories we've seen from a young writer in months. Herbert Girtley Jr. is remarkable.

Repassing

In “Repassing,” Geraldine returns to Mississippi to bury kin—and confront an old lie and the what-ifs that shaped her life in Chicago.

salvationsouth.com

Shawn Pitts @salvationsouth.com The Bones of Pauline Pusser (cc @keithherrell.bsky.social) www.salvationsouth.com/buford-pusse...

The Bones of Pauline Pusser

A McNairy County native reckons with new TBI evidence that the Walking Tall "ambush" of Buford and Pauline Pusser was no ambush at all.

salvationsouth.com

My new poem appears in @salvationsouth.com #poem #IceOut #poetry www.salvationsouth.com/colder-than-...

Colder Than Cold

Silas House turns a brutal snowstorm into a searing meditation on violence and bearing witness, as redbirds pecking in the snow hold out hope.

salvationsouth.com

So pleased to have Soft Avocado Heart in @salvationsouth.com Thanks to @chuckreece.bsky.social for seeing what I hoped an editor would see in this piece and for loving it. www.salvationsouth.com/texas-family...

Soft Avocado Heart

Sherri Alms’s essay from a Texas family funeral looks at how to belong in a family with different politics and religion. Grieving in Texas...

salvationsouth.com

Man, I love this poem by Lucie Brooks @salvationsouth.com www.salvationsouth.com/how-to-survi...

How to Survive the End of the World

Award-winning Kentucky poet Lucie Brooks, a finalist for the Grand Prix poetry prize, with ten lines of instruction on how to survive.

salvationsouth.com

Watch the newest installment of our “Fifty Years of Ferris” series: Bill Ferris’s landmark 1975 film, Made in Mississippi, plus Chuck Reece’s interview with Ferris www.salvationsouth.com/fifty-years-...

Worked on this piece about @widespreadpanic.com on and off for a year, and it's not a piece about music. It's a piece about music fans, and how this band has built a world for them that's stood for nearly 40 years.

A Place to Be Happy

Chuck Reece explores Widespread Panic, the devotion of its fans, and the enduring community built on joy, kinship, and sharing.

salvationsouth.com

I dearly love the writing of @chris-offutt.bsky.social. But I had no idea until last year that his eye was as sharp as his pen. Overjoyed to have his photographs (and words!) in @salvationsouth.com today.

No Grand Subjects Here: Offutt Shoots Mississippi

Mississippi photography by legendary writer Chris Offutt. This Southern photo essay captures everday sights with sharp Mississippi images.

salvationsouth.com

Mike Collins graduated high school, a private one founded in 1970 as whites only, in 1985. This segregation academy either taught spelling poorly, or Rep. Collins just couldn’t pass the class. www.fox5atlanta.com/news/rep-col... #salvationsouth #educationmatters

It’s not just new. It’s also pretty great.

Sarah Josephine@sarahjosephinep.bsky.social · last yr.

I have a new poem up over at @salvationsouth.com Things sure are heavy right now, but I wish you all some queer joy and community this Pride month. www.salvationsouth.com/queer-poetry...

Excited to be part of a group of readers performing this Friday evening at Arthurdale Heritage. Read more about this special place in the new story “POOR WAYFARING STRANGERS: CAN APPALACHIAN STUDIES SURVIVE THE AGE OF TRUMP?” out now from @salvationsouth.com. www.salvationsouth.com/appalachian-...

Southern and Appalachian studies programs in out colleges are critical. But they are in danger. Read this dispatch from @robgipe.bsky.social. Proud to have him in @salvationsouth.com.

My heart is filled with pride and gratitude this weekend as three of my poems are featured in Salvation South @salvationsouth.com - a publication I have admired since its first issue. It is a space that feels like a welcoming home with stories that connect us all. A huge thank you to Andy Fogle!

Memory, Migration, and Molasses

Three poems by Nancy Yang, a Southern-born poet in California. An exclusive new collection for Salvation South.

salvationsouth.com

Out today on @bullcitypress.com. This weekend, we'll have two stories excerpted from the book, plus "Ten Questions for Daniel Wallace."

Bull City Press@bullcitypress.com · last yr.

Excited about the release of Daniel Wallace's BENEATH THE MOON AND LONG DEAD STARS? Grab your copy at his launch reading, tonight at Flyleaf Books in Chapel Hill! flyleafbooks.com/event/wallac...

If you aren’t reading the Salvation South posts, you’re missing out on good stories.

Salvation South@salvationsouth.com · last yr.

Do you think your “creative days” are behind you? Read this inspiring piece from @eafentress.bsky.social. Then get to work!

Her eyes, my ambition Thank you @salvationsouth.com & @chuckreece.bsky.social

Chuck Reece@chuckreece.bsky.social · last yr.

@eafentress.bsky.social took what, in most writers’ hands, would have been a reflection on an artist’s career and turned it into inspiration for anyone in midlife who is driven to create. Proud to publish this in @salvationsouth.com.

Do you think your “creative days” are behind you? Read this inspiring piece from @eafentress.bsky.social. Then get to work!