Daniel Wallace Returns to Our Circle
As the “Big Fish” author’s tales grace our magazine once again, we invite you to join the Family Circle that keeps Southern voices—classic and fresh—alive and thriving.
Daniel Wallace | Salvation South | Southern literature
When I first read Daniel Wallace’s Big Fish all those years ago, I remember thinking: Here was a writer who could take the wildest, tallest tales and make them feel as intimate as a whispered confession.
Daniel Wallace | Salvation South | Southern literature
Daniel Wallace’s Enduring Southern Magic
Wallace’s stories have always danced along the border between the real and the fantastic, a line he’s spent his career blurring with a magician’s touch and a Southerner’s heart. Now, as we publish two exclusive excerpts from his first-ever collection of short stories, Beneath the Moon and Long Dead Stars, we’re proud to welcome Daniel back to the pages of Salvation South.
Wallace’s return is no small thing for us. He’s long been counted among the South’s greatest living novelists—an Alabama native whose first novel, Big Fish, became a national bestseller, a Tim Burton film, and a Broadway musical. His subsequent books—five novels, sort-of-children’s books, and nonfiction—have earned him the Harper Lee Award and a place in the Alabama Writers Hall of Fame. But more than the accolades, it’s his voice—wry, generous, unflinching—that makes his work matter. In these new stories, “The Long Road Home Is Covered in Limpid Roses” and “Neighbor,” you’ll find all the hallmarks of Wallace’s fiction: fathers and sons circling each other in the fog of memory and regret, the ghosts of childhood lingering into marriage, the ache and absurdity of family, and the strange, liberating power of loss.
Daniel Wallace’s stories remind us why we do this work. Our magazine was founded to bridge the divides that run through our region—to make a home for stories that challenge, heal, and connect us.
Read “The Long Road Home Is Covered in Limpid Roses,” a story from Wallace's latest book
Daniel Wallace | Salvation South | Southern literature
Why Wallace’s Stories Matter to Salvation South
If you’ve followed Salvation South, you know this isn’t Daniel’s first time in our pages. In 2023, we published an excerpt from his memoir, This Isn’t Going to End Well, a meditation on the life and death of his brother-in-law, William Nealy, along with his exclusive essay, “The Coolest Guy in the World,” about how he decoded Nealy’s journals and reshaped them into the book. We also featured an in-depth interview where Daniel spoke with candor about grief, forgiveness, and the myths we build around the people we love. Each time, our readers responded with the kind of gratitude reserved for writers who tell the truth, no matter how hard it is to face.
Daniel Wallace’s stories remind us why we do this work at Salvation South. Our magazine was founded to bridge the divides that run through our region—to make a home for stories that challenge, heal, and connect us. In just three years, we’ve welcomed legends like Ron Rash, Silas House, Mary Gauthier, and Cynthia Tucker, alongside emerging voices whose names you might not know yet, but will soon. We’ve published more than 500 stories, essays, and poems that wrestle with what it means to be Southern in the twenty-first century.
Read “Neighbor,” another story from Wallace's latest book
The Power of Community: Join Our Family Circle
But none of this happens without you. Right now, we’re in the midst of our 2025 membership drive—a monthlong invitation to join our Salvation South Family Circle. It’s your support, month after month or year after year, that keeps our doors open to writers like Daniel Wallace, and to the next generation of Southern storytellers whose voices are just beginning to ring out. Your membership doesn’t just fund words on a page. It keeps alive a community where journalists, fiction writers, essayists, poets, photographers, and filmmakers can share their truths, challenge old narratives, and dream up new ones.
As I told Daniel in our recent conversation, I’ve spent years turning friends on to his work by calling it “Southern magical realism”—imagine Gabriel Garcia Márquez born in Birmingham, I’d say. Daniel laughed at that, but he understood: The South has always been a place where the real and the fantastic live side by side, where stories are how we make sense of the world’s beauty and its pain. His work, and the work we publish every week, is proof.
So, as you read these new stories—one about a father whose shadow looms impossibly large, another about the ghosts that haunt us from childhood into love—I hope you’ll feel what I feel: gratitude. Gratitude for Daniel Wallace, for the South’s great writers, and for you, our readers and supporters, who make this circle unbroken.
If you’re already a member of our Family Circle, thank you. If you’re not, I invite you to join us today. With your help, we’ll keep welcoming writers like Daniel Wallace into our pages—and we’ll keep finding room at the table for every Southern voice that needs to be heard.
Thanks for reading!
Read “The Boy Who Could Not Fly,” an excerpt from Wallace's 2023 memoir
P.S. See below for details on the four levels of the Salvation South Family Circle. There are options for every budget.
The Cornbread Level: $5 monthly or $50 annually
You get:
- This pack of six brand-new Salvation South stickers—including our members-only Have Mercy Rainbow sticker.
- A standing 10% discount in the Salvation South Store
- Guaranteed access to Salvation South online events and workshops
The Biscuit Level: $10 monthly or $100 annually
You get:
- A commemorative 2025 Salvation South Have Mercy kitchen towel
- The aforementioned pack of six brand-new Salvation South stickers—including our members-only Have Mercy Rainbow sticker.
- A standing 15% discount in the Salvation South Store
- Guaranteed access to Salvation South online events and workshops
The Sunday Dinner Roll Level: $15 monthly or $150 annually
You get:
- A commemorative 2025 Salvation South Have Mercy T-shirt in any size from S to 4X
- The aforementioned pack of six brand-new Salvation South stickers—including our members-only Have Mercy Rainbow sticker.
- A standing 20% discount in the Salvation South Store
- Guaranteed access to Salvation South online events and workshops
The Red Velvet Cake Level: $25 monthly or $250 annually
You get:
- A cool, breezy, lightweight Salvation South performance hoodie (SPF 50) in any size from S to 4X.
- A sturdy canvas Salvation South tote bag—with a zipper closure!
- The aforementioned pack of six brand-new Salvation South stickers—including our members-only Have Mercy Rainbow sticker.
- A standing 25% discount in the Salvation South Store
- Guaranteed access to Salvation South online events and workshops
Chuck Reece is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Salvation South, the weekly web magazine you're reading right now. He was the founding editor of The Bitter Southerner. He grew up in the north Georgia mountains in a little town called Ellijay.
