Joshilyn Jackson, author of Gods in Alabama and Between, Georgia, interviewed me this week about what it means to be a Southern writer. In my opinion, it has to do with a lot more than just growing up down South, although that’s certainly part of it. I mean, it’s kinda difficult not to have some inclination for narrative when you grow up on the Gulf Coast:

No one in my family is a writer, but supper at my grandparents’ house in Brookhaven, Mississippi, was always an occasion for fabulous, rich, and often tall tales, which were passed around among aunts and uncles, cousins and second cousins and the like, as generously as the okra, butter beans, and cornbread. Even today, when I sit around with a bunch of friends in some oyster shack on Mobile Bay, with the sun shining and the beer flowing, I can always count on hearing a great story.