I want to write to you about joy. For the 38 years of my life that I can remember, I have studied that discipline. Fumbling toward hope and misunderstanding my own purpose, which I sabotage at inopportune moments, I seek joy daily, though its conditions retain for me the opaque beauty of a foreign language. […]
A photo essay edited by Doug Swift My college students thought their semester was over, but it was just beginning
By Matthew Hansen The man in the white cowboy hat knew the jig was up the day he entered a Chicago courtroom, placed his hand on the Bible and swore to tell the whole truth. Richard Hart wasn’t on trial that day in September 1951. The prosecution had called him to the stand as […]
Confronting the difficult truths of a changing Southern landscape. By Lyndsey Gilpin In the faded photo, my grandmother is 14 years old, huddled close to her best friend on a wooden fence somewhere in Eastern Kentucky. She’s wearing a sweater and rolled-up jeans, the humidity frizzing her chestnut-brown hair. The Appalachian mountainside climbs straight […]
(Or How I Ended Up in Chadron, Nebraska of all Places)