COME IN AND STAY AWHILE

Rob Rushin-Knopf

Water Always Wins

A jazz player who grew up roaming the banks of the Mississippi produces a musical meditation on life’s most essential element.

A Hundred Years of Earl Scruggs

In this centennial year of the North Carolina banjo legend’s birth, bluegrass wizard Tony Trischka extols his Earlness with a masterful tribute.

Unstuck in Pasaquan

A trip to St. EOM’s Pasaquan shrine is worth your time anytime. But on one Saturday this September, it was the hippest place in the cosmos.

Tupelo, Honey!

ELVIS! was born in Tupelo, crowned the King of Rock ’n’ Roll, and became such a legend—and punchline—that the man himself is almost beside the point. Almost.

The Kindness of Strangers

Playwright Tennessee Williams was born in Mississippi and raised in the almost-South of Missouri. But no writer is more indelibly associated with the Big Easy.

Bluegrass State Blues

Nat Myers’s sound is reminiscent of Charley Patton and Memphis Minnie, but his perspective as a first-generation Korean-American raised in Kentucky brings a fresh twist to the fingerstyle blues tradition.

Light in August

Our Southern Reader’s Travelogue continues on the trail of William Faulkner, from his home in Oxford to the bookshop that bears his name in New Orleans.

Harper Lee’s “Tired Old Town”

Visit little Monroeville, Alabama, the inspiration for the immortal “To Kill a Mockingbird.” Our Southern Reader’s Travelogue continues.

The Peacock Pilgrimage

Our Southern Reader’s Travelogue series continues with a visit to Milledgeville, Georgia, where Flannery O’Connor raised peacocks until her death at age 39. Peacocks still roam at Andalusia, and the rest of the property looks just like it did when she was writing her classic novels and stories.

The Southern Reader’s Travelogue: Zora Neale Hurston

If you’re a Southern literature lover whose summertime reading aspirations don’t involve sand and sunburn, we have some travel ideas that don’t require sunscreen.

Sino-Nashville Twang

Nashville is famous for its twang, but Wu Fei takes that sound to a new realm. She picks with banjo players. But her instrument has five times as many strings.

The Diva Next Door

Arkansas-born Shara Nova is an alt-pop icon, acclaimed operatic singer, and prolific composer. She defies category. In a biz that wants women to fit in boxes, that’s a problem.