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...

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