It’s been a while since I posted a resource roundup here; I’d like to first apologize for that, but also to check in. Frankly, it hasn’t felt all that useful to post these in the context of the world—even when I know sharing resources is more important than ever. This has been a strange semester here in Chapel Hill, riddled with violence and uncertainty from start to finish. I’m straddling a line of both sharing my work with the larger academic world (ie: believing in its importance) and feeling that almost nothing matters in a world where we can willfully allow a genocide to happen, where the voices of the people feel powerless against those in charge, where so little of what I have to say makes any difference at all. I say this not in service of wishing to be reminded that my voice matters, but in service of a reminder that our voices are far more powerful as a collective—and bringing those voices together in collectively is really, truly, the core of what we do here at Good Folk.

With that, I’d like to point to a statement of solidarity with the people of Palestine that was written by some graduate students in our American Studies and Folklore department here at UNC, myself included. I am very proud to learn and work alongside these folks, and to call for an immediate ceasefire, support of the American Studies Association’s pursuit of the Boycott, Divest, Sanctions (BDS) movement, and to encourage us all to look closer at America’s role in global conflict. Please feel free to share this statement.

Over the last few weeks, I have spoken to many individuals who support the movement for Palestinian freedom behind closed doors but are afraid to speak out for fear of losing employment, support, or even close relationships in their life. At my alma mater, Columbia students involved in Arab student groups are being threatened by a “doxxing truck” on campus, even when they are not being outspoken about the genocide. How sad for universities to allow their students to be treated this way. How frightening that we are all so afraid to speak out against a global genocide, which should never be this controversial. How terrifying that so many of the “liberal” (ie: mostly private) universities are the ones in fact causing the greatest harm. I’d like to point here to what I feel is the most important line in our statement for scholars of the field: “To trade in the language of decoloniality while acquiescing to the pursuit of genocide through our silence betrays the values to which we claim to aspire.”

There are many excellent people writing about this conflict; I have found myself drawn especially to ’s Seeda School; ’s How To Cure A Ghost; and ’s Care Ecology. Haymarket Books is offering free e-books about Palestinian history for those who wish to learn. I have been grateful to those on my social media feeds who have been relentless in their coverage, both on the ground in Palestine and from distant shores. I am finding these days that I cannot look away, cannot think of anything else, cannot possibly go on with life as normal while more lives are lost each day. It has been an entire month since I wrote to you about my time in the Middle East and the importance of paying close attention, and all of that still holds true. I cannot—and will not—look away.

Adia Victoria has been one of my favorite artists for years, but her words on Palestine have rung loud and true.

These words as well, from Joy Priest.

I have revisited this Naomi Klein piece on environmentalism, Edward Said, and the idea of creating “sacrifice zones” around the world so many times this month.

Said helps us imagine what that might look like as well. He helped to popularise the Arabic word sumud (‘to stay put, to hold on’): that steadfast refusal to leave one’s land despite the most desperate eviction attempts and even when surrounded by continuous danger. It’s a word most associated with places like Hebron and Gaza, but it could be applied equally today to residents of coastal Louisiana who have raised their homes up on stilts so that they don’t have to evacuate, or to Pacific Islanders whose slogan is ‘We are not drowning. We are fighting.’ In countries like the Marshall Islands and Fiji and Tuvalu, they know that so much sea-level rise is inevitable that their countries likely have no future. But they refuse just to concern themselves with the logistics of relocation, and wouldn’t even if there were safer countries willing to open their borders – a very big if, since climate refugees aren’t currently recognised under international law. Instead they are actively resisting: blockading Australian coal ships with traditional outrigger canoes, disrupting international climate negotiations with their inconvenient presence, demanding far more aggressive climate action. If there is anything worth celebrating in the Paris Agreement signed in April – and sadly, there isn’t enough – it has come about because of this kind of principled action: climate sumud.

But this only scratches the surface of what we can learn from reading Said in a warming world. He was, of course, a giant in the study of ‘othering’ – what is described in Orientalism as ‘disregarding, essentialising, denuding the humanity of another culture, people or geographical region’. And once the other has been firmly established, the ground is softened for any transgression: violent expulsion, land theft, occupation, invasion. Because the whole point of othering is that the other doesn’t have the same rights, the same humanity, as those making the distinction. What does this have to do with climate change? Perhaps everything.

Saw this band play last night at Cat’s Cradle alongside Slaughter Beach, Dog, and I have not stopped listening to this song since.

This one too.

Imagining the ghost forest, by Everest Pipkin for Mn Artists.

And from The Assembly, a piece on Why Some Stay—important to consider both in terms of localized crisis and disaster and global conflict. There is power in refusing to turn away. There is something to be said for that kind of community.P

One of the best pieces I’ve read recently about the importance of ideas of place: Wyatt Williams on Lucinda Williams and Louisiana for The Bitter Southerner. So good. So so good.

“I quit my job in Atlanta that same month and moved to Bali, which is as far on this planet as you can get from that gas station. There were some days over there that I entertained the idea of never coming back, one way or another. What I found in Bali were beautiful people who grew rice and liked to go to cockfights on the weekend and barbecue pigs and make moonshine and play music and believe that there was little barrier between our physical world and the one of ghosts and spirits. What I mean to say is that I glimpsed just a fraction of the enormous beauty of that place, and all my heart could recognize in it was the idea of Louisiana. I knew then that I would never escape it. 

I moved back in 2020, ended up just on the other side of the river in Mississippi with a group of friends. The water was high that year and the casino had to bring in pumps to keep the river out of the gambling floor. We caught catfish on trot lines and cut them up and fried them for dinner night after night. We foraged for mushrooms and picked buckshot out of wild turkeys and soaked their breasts in buttermilk, and on the very best of days, drove over the bridge into Louisiana, where a drive-thru liquor store would sell double-strength frozen daiquiris in Styrofoam cups, and we’d drive home drinking with windows down as the sun set on the river bluff. I’m leaving out a lot of parts of this story and telling some of it out of order and don’t particularly care if it makes sense. There was a blond woman from Mississippi I fell in love with on account of her voice; it didn’t work out. But if you asked for an explanation why I love this place, the only answer would be just the same as why I hate it. There aren’t enough hours in the day.”

In southern Chile, at age twenty, I spent a week living deep in the Andes amongst water rights activists, hiking guides, and large families who welcomed me in. There, riding in the backseat of trucks on the way to get vegetables at the local market, stargazing and drinking beer with my host brothers in the backyard, and staring out at the sprawling fields of sheep grazing in the grass, all I could see was the North Carolina I remembered and had been haunted by all my life. Like Williams, I knew in that moment that I could never leave it. And like Williams, I moved back in 2020, living amongst a group of friends in a strange small town. I love this place. I hate this place. I do not think I will ever be able to go anywhere else and not think of it.

I always come back to this poem by Cameron Awkward-Rich. Like you, I was raised dreaming. Like you, I keep my hand on my heart. Hand on my stupid heart.

It’s been an exhausting but busy-in-the-good way week around here. See our recap of the recent Good Folk Fest here, and enjoy the resources below as you head into your weekend.

This sounds like an incredible workshop on eco-mythology and embodied storytelling.

As does this one: Joy in the time of Apocalypse.

Our friends at 723 released an EP today that is just. so. good. I cannot stop listening to this. Catch it live next weekend.

Yeah, we’re feeling that heatwave. Here’s the New York Times on how extreme heat in Texas is only a sign of what’s to come.

I’ve been teaching my students about the quilters of Gee’s Bend, Alabama for years. Here’s a great short film for more.

Also loving this new track from Asheville-based band Tombstone Poetry.

Marlee Grace’s newsletters is one of the few I open every week. Loved this one on teaching as a practice. It reminds me quite a bit of what I’ve been saying to everyone in my life about my new philosophy that organizing is as much a form of artistry as anything else— and how I’m starting to think it’s mine.

They’re playing Ethel Cain in the coffee shop I write this to you from, so, of course, here is the best song of all time.

More newsletter recs: I’ve also recently gotten into Don’t Rock the Inbox. Here’s a profile they did on Nick Shoulders, Arkansas, the beauty of busking, and the fight for a better country.

There is beauty everywhere you look. Look for it.

We’re ONE WEEK out from Good Folk Fest at the Haw River Ballroom in Saxapahaw, North Carolina! Learn more about the artists playing, get your tickets, and join us here.

Thanks to Paul Langan of Durham Cool for featuring us and Good Folk Fest— check out his interview with myself and Sol Ramirez of 1,2,3 Puppetry.

Thanks also to Wayne Leonard and WHUP Radio for their feature of the festival— you can listen to Sol and I’s conversation with Wayne about it here.

GOOD FOLK FEST TICKETS

Read the transcript of our most recent podcast episode with KB Brookins here— and get your copy of their new book, Freedom House, out from Deep Vellum now.

Speaking of KB, I loved this interview they did with Erica Abbott for Chill Subs. Read it here.

Shout out to Triangle-based musician Tre. Charles for the NPR feature this week! You can catch Tre. at Good Folk Fest this weekend, and listen to his gorgeous live session here.

I’m dying to get my hands on a copy of Stacy Jane Grover’s new essay collection, Tar Hollow Trans, out now from University Press of Kentucky. Loved this interview with Stacy in Poets & Writers.

Poetry from Ada Limon, always:

I think of that walk in the valley where
J said, You don’t believe in God? And I said,
No. I believe in this connection we all have
to nature, to each other, to the universe.
And she said, Yeah, God. And how we stood there,
low beasts among the white oaks, Spanish moss,
and spider webs, obsidian shards stuck in our pockets,
woodpecker flurry, and I refused to call it so.

Rae Garringer for the VQR on the Queens of Queen City: Drag Culture in small town Appalachia.

How Southern prisons shaped American music, via Scalawag.

A few things:

If you have yet to get your tickets to Good Folk Fest, coming up on July 1st at the Haw River Ballroom in Saxapahaw, NC, now is the time. Learn more about each artist and get tickets here.

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We also dropped an excellent new pod episode with poet and writer KB Brookins this week, talking all about climate, disaster, the South, and art’s role in reimagining the future. Give it a listen and get KB’s new book, Freedom House.

It’s summer in the South, y’all.

I’m a huge White Stripes fan, so it’s no surprise to anyone that I dug into the Meg White profile in Elle this week. Lots of great photos and anecdotes here, even if the author was never able to get in contact with Meg herself.

Happy pride month. I’ve said it before and I’ll keep saying it, but the South has the largest population of LGBTQIA+ individuals in the country. We’re here. We’ve always been here. Celebrate by pre-ordering this awesome new collection, edited by Zane McNeill and Rebecca Scott, Deviant Hollers: Queering Appalachian Ecologies for a Sustainable Future, out for release in 2024 from Kentucky Press.

It took me a long time to realize I do want a quiet life. This piece makes me feel less apologetic for that.

Nicole Young in Scalawag on disaster capitalism, climate change, and the campaign to sell Black New Orleans.

My local paper, Indy Week, is hiring two North Carolina-based reporting fellows. Sounds like a great gig!

Via The Assembly, how whitewater rafting became an industry in North Carolina.

And via Virginia Public Radio, what’s next for opponents of the Mountain Valley Pipeline?

It’s a cold and rainy holiday weekend here, and time feels it has regressed somehow. From where I sit, I’m watching the wind pick up outside, spinning the trees out in circles. Nothing is linear. I can sit with that. Be well.

Via Scalawag, “How to Build at the End of the World” by Miliaku Nwabueze. Love this line: “Even a peaceful people know peace is forged.”

Been on repeat all week.

Indigo de Souza in The Creative Independent on embodying your truth. Yes:

As personal as my art is, I recognize that, when someone else is receiving it, it becomes their own, and that’s a really special thing. What I adore about the whole process is how it can be shared in that way.

A great piece by Zoya Teirstein in Grist about the Oath Keepers and the far-right in the climate movement.

Via Haymarket Books, announcing the Writing Freedom Fellowship to support writers impacted by the criminal legal system.

Some small good news this week.

Anderson Clayton, the youngest U.S. state party leader and North Carolina Democratic Party Chair, on Good Morning America.

Finally, some Big Thief for your weekend. I’ve been revisiting this album quite a bit lately, and it really gets better every time I listen. And for one of the best live versions of any song ever— I will sell my soul to have a recorded version of the live Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You.

Busy week around here catching up on lots of emails, obligations, and spending time with the people I love. Last week it felt like summer and now, as I write this, I’m staring out at the rain and the gray sky outside the window, the heat back on, and I’m reminded that transitions are really more just cycles, the world turning back in on itself. This has been a beautiful month. This is a beautiful life.

Speaking of beautiful things, we published a great new podcast episode this week with the wonderful John Harrison, a musician and artist based here in North Carolina. I especially appreciated the bit on the difference between being open and being vulnerable here. Give it a listen if you have not already!

It’s been a hard week for LGBTQ+ communities and organizers in the South. Donate to the Southern Trans Youth Fund here.

More great ways to support the LBGTQ+ communities here in the South— attend the Here & Queer Festival and support quite a few Good Folk friends, including After The Bloom, Dissimilar South, and our producer, Vic Landers.

Calling all Appalachian artists…

@jquimbymusicSome of my tune “To the Choir,” available on all streaming services. #fyp #foryou #foryoupage #folk #folkmusic #country #countrymusic #music #musician #artist #singer #newartist #guitar #guitarist #joshuaquimby #blues #bluesmusic #musiciansoftiktok #artistsoftiktok

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I can’t stop listening to this.

Only here. Only now.

Speaking of poetry, I bought an apocalypse-themed fridge magnet poetry kit, and I think it’s finally breaking me out of my slump:

North Carolina folks! This weekend!

Music for the weekend…

First off, I am sorry in advance for not getting one of these out to you in the last few weeks. Somehow, in the rush of travel, finals, and podcast recording, the last month totally got away from me. We’ll be back on a more regular post schedule from now on, but in the meantime, do check out all the new episodes of the podcast that have gone out in the last few weeks— there’s some really great ones in there, as well as our first live set from the Good Folk x Live From the Nest collab!

Speaking of music, there’s been so many great releases out of North Carolina lately. Starting with the new Indigo de Souza…

And a new album from Wednesday:

A new track from our friends at The Violet Exploit:

Loving this Snail Mail track as we transition here into spring and early summer:

And I’ve been deep in Durhamite Alice Gerrard’s discography for another project I’m working on…

Speaking of that project, come out to the incredible Down Yonder Farm this weekend and see two of our favorite people: Palmyra and Dissimilar South.

GET TICKETS!

If you’re looking for a new summer read, Hub City has a great e-book deal going on right now.

Learn more about the life of Emily Meggett, Gullah Geechee chef and cookbook author from Edisto Island, SC, who passed away last week.

I 100000% think Mergoat is the coolest magazine out there right now. Every single thing they say in this call for entries for their third issue. Every. Single. Thing:

Transition is not only a movement from one physical state to another, it is also a psychic and societal operation. It is the enfleshment of hope, possibility, and self-determination. What else might the queerness of Appalachia teach us about our hills and heritage? Can we lift the veil of separation hanging between our desire for a new future and the currents of our bleak reality? Can we project another world, another future, into the void left by industrial capitalism — a world characterized by ecological reciprocity. Can we transition? Will we transition?

The old colonial definition of “nature” is wielded like a weapon against trans people. The geography of queer bodies has become the archetype for what many deem “unnatural” — a metaphor we reject outright. So, as we cloak ourselves in grief at the passing of the holocene. As we seek insight from the people wounded by the ill-wrought vocabulary of “nature” that laid the groundwork for colonial violence and domination within the holocene. We seek to build a new vocabulary, one of reciprocity, deference, and care.

When faced with the grim realities of ecological collapse, we defy the sedentary logic of despair, apocalypse, and inaction. We receive the appearance of the void upon history’s horizon not as the apocalyptic impossibility of a future, but as an opening for the creation of futures heretofore unimaginable. There is a challenge at hand, though — how do we deconstruct the colonial image of “nature” as something wholly other than human society? Then, as we move through the grief of losing that once treasured ideal, how do we inaugurate the process of producing new futures?

Not related to the South at all, but I found this conversation on found families in fandom culture really interesting.

Kyle Ingram for UNC on the Moore County protests and the power of local drag queen Naomi Dix.

Tressie McMillan Cotton in the New York Times on why she keeps her eyes on the South. Yes:

We like to look to the horizon instead of to the soil because we bury the people we do not care about in the South. It is where we have put migrants and poor people and sick people. It is where we put the social problems we are willing to accept in exchange for the promise of individual opportunity in places that sound more sophisticated. But the South is still a laboratory for the political disenfranchisement that works just as well in Wisconsin as it does in Florida. Americans are never as far from the graves we dig for other people as we hope…

…I keep my eyes on the South for a lot of reasons. This is my home. It is the region of this nation’s original sin. Nothing about the future of this country can be resolved unless it is first resolved here: not the climate crisis or the border or life expectancy or anything else of national importance, unless you solve it in the South and with the people of the South.

Yesterday it was 85 degrees and sunny, and today I don’t think it has stopped raining since I woke up. I write this to you from my dining table by the window, where I have the fireplace on next to me and the red lantern in my living room lit up overhead. Seasons change, and we change with it. Good.

We dropped a new podcast episode this week with Nashville-based musician Hubble Salgado, who makes funky folk music under the name Fresh Air 4. You can listen to that here:

We also have a few more tickets left for our special house show in Durham tomorrow with Live From the Nest and featuring the music of Alexander Robichaud, Scivic Rivers, and Dissimilar South. Get em while they’re left— this one’s going to be special.

I’ve been WAITING for this ONE! North Carolina band Wednesday dropped their new album today and it does not disappoint. I’ve told everyone for months how obsessed I am with Bull Believer, but I’ve had this song on repeat allllll morning.

See more about Wednesday in their Paste Magazine feature.

@centerforfoodsafetyIn case nobody told you today: the Earth needs us, and we belong here. 🌎 Lyla June is an Indigenous musician, scholar, cultural historian and community organizer of Diné (Navajo), Tsetsêhestâhese (Cheyenne) and European lineages.

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Love this perspective on humans and the earth. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the popularity of takes such as “we are the virus” and how so much of apocalyptic media includes elements of eco-brutalism and the earth regenerating without humans, but I also think it’s important to ask: how can we co-exist? How can we help?

And within that idea of apocalypse vs. dystopia vs. utopia, this Frederic Jameson piece is one I’ve been citing a lot lately.

Came back to this Tracy K. Smith poem this week. So good.

I also came back to this story, “Ghosts” in The Believer. I think about this piece all the time. I still think AI is bad overall, but this piece is so beautiful it almost makes me reconsider.

Just a great week for music, truly. New Indigo de Souza as well.

An old piece but one I’ve enjoyed. By David Graeber in The Baffler, A Practical Utopian’s Guide to the Coming Collapse.

Join us a week from today for A Night of Folk and Friends, featuring special acoustic sets from Alexander Robichaud, Scivic Rivers, and Dissimilar South, plus a live podcast recording.

The transcript from episode seventeen of the Good Folk podcast, with the lovely Matt Southern, went live this week. Matt also curated an awesome playlist for us:

Anne Byrn reflects for Bitter Southerner about Nashville in the wake of this week’s Covenant school shooting.

Abby Lee Hood asks for Modern Farmer: are Appalachian foodways at risk of being lost forever?

New Boygenius, of course.

And more foodways, this time on grapefruits in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley. So many gorgeous images in this piece as well.

Breathing in and out with the earth:

@emwaldyBreathe in… breathe out with nature #nature #wildlife #forest #woods #explore #wales

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Pedro Pascal as mushrooms. And my thoughts on apocalypse, attention, and the Last of Us in the newsletter this week.

Happy National Poetry Month. I am, as always, thinking of Richard Siken. It’s green. It’s still green.

A quote from Marion Woodman:

And as a last bit of shameless self-promo, I am in this! (Along with many other incredible writers). Get a copy from Rebel Satori.

When I listen to this, I am sure it will all be okay. And it will be.

In terms of news for things around here, it’s been a big week for Good Folk. Our podcast producer Vic turned 25, and we are taking them out tonight to celebrate— happy birthday, Vic!

We also announced a very exciting secret concert and live podcast taping in Durham, NC on Saturday, April 8th. Featuring acoustic sets from the incredible Alexander Robichaud, Scivic Rivers, and Dissimilar South. Get your ticket! Once they go, they’re gone.

We also dropped a new podcast episode with Matt Southern, a musician based here in the Triangle. We’re working with Matt, who runs Live from the Nest, on the above event. Lots of wisdom here about community, collaboration, and using your work to support the work of those around you.

I got to see Tombstone Poetry play in Asheville last weekend, and have had this on repeat since. So good!

New music from Moore County musician and friend of Good Folk, Logan Duke.

Appalachia featured in Bon Appetit! God, what I would do for some of my grandma’s chicken and dumplings right now. Yes, yall, we eat more than biscuits and grits in the South. Read this!

Really appreciated Alicia Kennedy’s thoughts on place and home in her newsletter this week.

In a short story I wrote that comes out this weekend at the 2023 Tennessee Williams/Saints and Sinners festival, I imagined a North Carolina coast where all those who could picked up their homes and moved them away. Now that is a reality.

More good stuff from our wonderful friends Palmyra.

Yes, I’m watching The Last of Us. Yes, I think it’s the best show I’ve ever seen. Yes, my thesis work is focusing on ecological apocalypse. Here the New York Times asks: are mushrooms our friends?

I appreciate this thread. It really is much harder to choose to stay sometimes. But it’s always important to support those who make that choice.

It’s a beautiful world if you are willing to look close enough to see it.

Then it came to me, my little life. I remembered my life
the way an axe handle, mid-­swing, remembers the tree.

& I was free.

Wood Working at the End of the World, via Ocean Vuong. And I was free…

It’s been the kind of week that leaves me feeling intense amounts of happiness, fulfillment, and love. I am so grateful for this life, and for all the artists who I call friends and collaborators. There is so much beauty out there in the world when you hold space for it— and so many people who will make you feel that love if you let them. I was listening to back to our final episode of season one of the podcast, where Vic and I got into a bit of Good Folk lore, and I found myself struck by this line of Vic’s: “You will look back in five years and you will be so excited to see how far you came. It will come. Whatever you are looking for, it will come. Maybe not in the way that you thought it would, but it will come and it will fulfill you in ways you never thought would happen.”

If someone had told me even then the life I would be living now, I would not have believed it. There is so much hope and comfort in that. There is so much joy to be found.

Speaking of the podcast, we published a new episode this week with Moore County based band The Violet Exploit. I love love love this band and this conversation. Catch up above, and stay tuned for the transcript next week (and just FYI, we’re now alternating episodes and transcripts, so you get the episode first and the transcript the following week).

When worlds collide… I am so very lucky to be working with the incredible Down Yonder Farm (uniting Hillsborough arts since 1978!) for a thesis-related project, and the equally incredible folk trio Palmyra will be playing a show there this spring alongside Dissimilar South— aka all the things I love in one place. Do not miss this. All the cool people will be there. I promise. Catch up on our podcast episode with Palmyra here, and then go get your tickets.

A very important read on the effects of lapsed Covid relief in Louisville.

Really enjoying the Rooted Substack, and especially this piece, “An Ode to the Southern Exile.”

I’ve spent most of this week working on a paper about climate apocalypse through a Southern Gothic lens, and I really loved this graphic series about the Kentucky mudslides by Austyn Gaffney and Martha Park in Bitter Southerner.

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Join us for book club this Tuesday, March 7th at 6PM CST/7PM EST to discuss Ava’s Man and introduce Boys of Alabama. Register below, or reach out with any questions.

REGISTER NOW

Really feels like spring when I have this blasting with the windows down.

Big Thief can do no wrong.

And on that, when I saw Big Thief at the North Carolina Museum of Art in 2021, they played this incredibly good electric version of Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You. I’ve been dying for them to drop this ever since, but alas— thankful for YouTube here.

This story by Austyn Wohlers in Joyland. Beautiful:

“But no, she thought, resisting. My memories are meaningful. No one else is building treehouses. Not with bridges, a ring around a grove, cod swimming in the trunk of dark oak, a stable full of armored stallions. Other people don’t understand, can’t understand.

One day she would be able to articulate that it was something about the speed of life she found so distasteful. People asked her to respond, and by the time she formulated something thoughtful to say they were already confused at her silence. If she responded quickly, it just came out wrong. She did not like speaking. She was always trailing behind.”

Seeing through the horror and into the wonder, which always lies beyond:

Bookmobiles to the rescue, via Scalawag.

Surprise Monday Resource Roundup for you here as last week completely got away from me. I hope you all had a lovely weekend, and that your Monday is off to a solid start. I’m on coffee #3, sitting in the patch of sunlight that comes through my office window, and feeling very grateful for all these artists and friends in my life. It’s easy to imagine nothing has changed when you look at in the moment; when you look backwards, you discover that almost everything has. Everything about my life these days resembles what I once could have only dreamed. Hold on to those dreams of yours.

Admin things: our second book club meeting will take place next Tuesday, March 7th! We’ll be discussing Ava’s Man, and introducing our March pick, Boys of Alabama by Genevieve Hudson, one of my personal favorite books I’ve read the last few years. Excited to see you there! We also have a discussion guide for Ava’s Man as you read along, including writing prompts.

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More exciting things— this week’s podcast guest Jesse Barber, an incredibly talented photographer and documentarian, in the New York Times. Listen to our episode with Jesse here, and read this fascinating piece here. Transcript with Jesse dropping this week, so stay tuned.

Happening March 4th to March 14th, support the Defend the Atlanta Forest movement with a week of action at the Weelaunee Forest in Atlanta. Learn more here— there will be music, workshops, discussions, and more. And learn more about the proposed Cop City and what has been happening in the fight to save the forest here, if you aren’t already familiar.

I’ve been obsessed with Zelda Fitzgerald for a long time, and I love this poem by Aria Aber. Born in Alabama, buried in Asheville, and a Southerner through and through.

Had this on repeat the entire time I’ve been writing this.

Also loving this new drop from North Carolina band Tan Universe.

And another plug for this Tombstone Poetry EP, this song especially. How lucky am I to live in a state with such musical talent!

Another poem I love:

Hub City Press opening up for novel submissions this week! Get em in, people.

More poetry! That line: Has cruelty ever saved you… My god. My god!

One more poem for you for the week. I printed this one out and have it here in my kitchen where I read it every morning. This beauty is a type of protest, I think— to take it all, even when unwilling, even when it hurts. We take it.

We posted the discussion guide and writing prompts this week for Ava’s Man, the February pick of the Good Folk Book Club. Follow along here, and register for our next meeting, March 7th at 7pm EST/6pm CST, below.

REGISTER NOW

Loving this piece on the fairy tale as an MFA antidote by Lincoln Michael, complete with a literary fairy tale syllabus. One of the best courses I ever took as an undergraduate creative writing student was a folk and fairy tale course, and these days I’m especially interested in horror and gothic fiction as ways into— and out of— traditional literary forms. Good stuff here.

West Virginia Public Broadcasting is hiring!

As is Oxford American…

And WMMT is seeking DJs! Lots of cool things here, people.

@brenn_musicthe clouds look so beautiful in this video❤️ ive got some big news for you guys soon!! #fyp

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Good music…

More good music, out from our friends at Trash Tape Records today…

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We dropped a new episode of the podcast this week with the wonderful Ida Floreak, an artist based in New Orleans. You can listen to it on Spotify above, here in your browser, or read the full transcript.

We also kicked off the Good Folk Book Club with a beginning discussion of Ava’s Man by Rick Bragg! We’ll be delving into it further in our March meeting, as well as looking ahead to our next book, Boys of Alabama by Genevieve Hudson. You can register for that below:

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This poem was shared with me this week, and I have not stopped thinking about it since. “BACKTALKING A GUY WHO TRIES TO GET YOUR NUMBER BY SAYING YOU’RE NOT WHAT I EXPECTED OUT OF A WEST VIRGINIAN, NOT A REDNECK AT ALL” by Keegan Lester & Isabelle Shepard:

It means Skyping with your friend in New York because neither of you
live in West Virginia anymore. It means

feeling guilty every time it rains
for leaving. What’d you expect? Skinning deer and possums— 

Well, there’s that too. Watch one
try to cross the road. Watch its dead body bloat on the side of the road.

Watch my hands sketch that in art class in high school.
Watch me write poems to West Virginia each time I call my mom on the phone.

I’ve had this on repeat all morning.

Love these photos and essay by Virginia Hanusik in The Bitter Southerner.

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I’ve just landed in Florida for the weekend, and it appears I’ve carried the rain that’s hung over North Carolina all week with me. Still, there’s something comforting about seeing palm trees again; growing up between the foothills and the coast, the two things that remind me most of home are pine and palm. In this dead of winter, I remind myself that nothing is truly dead. Here are the seasons unspooling, here is the place where we meet. As Emily St. John Mandel writes in Station Eleven: “But these thoughts broke apart in his head and were replaced by strange fragments: This is my soul and the world unwinding, this is my heart in the still winter air.”

Good Folk Book Club launches on Tuesday! I’m so excited to “meet” those of you who have already registered, and if you have yet to do so, you can here. If you don’t finish the book before Tuesday, don’t stress! We’ll reserve some time at our next meeting for further discussion, so just catch up when you can.

A so-called “social recession” doesn’t seem shocking to me, but I absolutely think it will have greater implications than we can imagine. It’s hard enough being in the world, and much harder to be in the world alone.

That being said, here are some thoughts on solitude by Montaigne in The Marginalian.

On brand, The New York Times did some stereotyping of the rural this week, once again describing it as a monolith place full of resentment towards the urban. I like this take on “rural rage” by Claire Carlson in The Daily Yonder (and a great newsletter to subscribe to, if you don’t already).

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This has been a busy week and also one of my favorite I’ve had in a long time. A week of exciting conversations and new connections and many ruminations on empathy and community and joy as a form of activism— all the things that drew me to launching Good Folk in the first place.

I hope this weekend brings you peace, in whatever form that may take for you. Lots of things in this week’s roundup for you to enjoy, below…

We launched season two of the podcast this week with the incredible Official Bard of Baldwin County. I love this conversation, despite my audio mishaps. You can listen above on Spotify, directly in Substack here, or read the full transcript here.

And what wonderful timing, as the Bard has a brand new EP that just dropped today!

I was reminded of this quote today and in the midst of so much pain this week, I think it serves as a constant reminder:

“You should be angry. You must not be bitter. Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. It doesn’t do anything to the object of its displeasure. So use that anger. You write it. You paint it. You dance it. You march it. You vote it. You do everything about it. You talk it. Never stop talking it.”

Maya Angelou

It’s still the new year in my mind, and this Silas House poem really gets at everything I’d like to say:

Asheville band Wednesday in Pitchfork! We love to see it!

Calling all folklorists… Folkways is hiring!

Scalawag is also hiring, both for a Creative Director and an Editor-in-Chief.

Resonates. I am only trying to live wide eyed:

I am also trying to live with everyday awe.

This song by Mon Rovîa, living in Tennessee by way of Liberia, helps with that.

I also cannot stop listening to this song.

I probably wouldn’t have become a folklorist of any sort without my initial lifelong obsession with mythology. Loving Kiki Rockwell’s videos (those VISUALS!) and especially this take on the Hades and Persephone myth.

And another quote I was reminded of today, from Arcadia, my personal favorite book:

“After the discomfort passes— blazing sun forgotten, hotspots numbed to blisters, shoulders’ rise and dip overcoming the ache by sheer repetition— the future sharpens before him, the way every blade of grass on a clear summer morning seems etched by a pin. He is in Arcadia still. He feels himself older, his body tighter in the joints, the muscles softer. He can feel his parents nearby. And Helle is there, older, too, and smiling, and she loves him. He feels his hope breathing and stretching, a living creature. He closes his eyes to keep the daydream in. Fervently, he bargains. it doesn’t have to be perfect as it had been in the brief pulse of a vision. He knows that a longing for perfection is the hole in the damn that can let everything pour out.”

This time a year ago, it was my third weekend snowed in to my studio apartment, and I remember thinking I was going to go insane. The entire month passed in a blur, time seeming to drag slowly, hardly at all, the month stretching into an oblivion that felt dark and cold, and I just felt distant within it. I spent most of that month walking the trail near my house along the creek, watching the snow fall, melt, and fall again. It was beautiful. It was terrible. It created a stark association in my mind, and when this January rolled around again, I found myself instilled with a sort of new fear, one of the repetition of that isolation, which it felt I had barely crawled my way out of.

Is it normal to be afraid of a month? There are two each year that now roll around this way for me: January and June. Each time they hit, I feel I am pulled back into patterns of who I was long ago, a person it sometimes feels I might never leave behind. Once, that frightened me; lately I think I am growing comfortable with embracing them.

It was strange to me to look at the date today and realize January has almost ended, and that all-encompassing sadness has not returned. My life often feels the same, as if little has changed, when in fact if I look back so little is the same. This year there has been no snow. I have been out in the world more than ever. And still, despite it, I find myself missing the river and the white-coated banks. Is it human nature to always long for the things that hurt us?

Anyways. The weather this week has been warm. I’ve walked through bare forests without a jacket and debated interesting things with interesting people in long hallways, in coffee shops, over Zoom calls at my dining table. The world goes on. Time moves with it. I am looking back and looking forward. I am finding comfort with the between.

In my favorite poem of all time, Richard Siken writes the following. I’ve long said that last line would be my first tattoo, and I found myself repeating it today while moving through the world:

Explaining will get us nowhere. 
I was away, I don't know where, lying on the floor,
pretending I was dead. I wanted to hurt you
but the victory is that I could not stomach it. We have
swallowed him up, they said. It's beautiful. It really is.
I had a dream about you. We were in the gold room
where everyone finally gets what they want. 
You said Tell me about your books, your visions made
of flesh and light and I said This is the Moon. This is
the Sun. Let me name the stars for you. Let me take you
there. The splash of my tongue melting you like a sugar
cube... We were in the gold room where everyone 
finally gets what they want, so I said What do you
want, sweetheart? and you said Kiss me. Here I am
leaving you clues. I am singing now while Rome
burns. We are all just trying to be holy. My applejack,
my silent night, just mash your lips against me. 
We are all going forward. None of us are going back.

I can’t stop thinking about this music video.

Chapel Hill artists! Apply to the Basement residency!

And all artists, but especially Triangle ones— get your art on the JVG walls (and get a rose cardamom latte while you’re at it. Trust me.)

A great article by Bryant Barnes on agricultural histories of the New South.

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It’s Friday the 13th, which I suppose should feel unlucky, but after a grueling week today has felt surprisingly pleasant. The weather has been warm albeit cloudy, and I’m sitting in a favorite cafe that happens to be blasting a fantastic playlist. The view is nice, the lights are dim, the personal news has been good today. It’s the little things.

Enjoy your weekend. Resources below.

We’re talking slow activism, rurality, and mythology in the newsletter this week.

Apply to the Appalachian Foodways Practitioner Fellowship!

Unashamed lover of the swamp here. Nothing like it:

This story by my wonderful friend, colleague, and fellow folklore student Sara Graybeal in Uncharted Mag absolutely floored me. Sara!!! I’m so honored to know you.

“You say I loved you like a little sister or a teddy bear. Maybe I did, but it was because I didn’t have either of those things. I loved you like the best thing in my life—see how that sounds different, but it’s essentially the same thing? I loved you like something I hadn’t been burdened with, something I was too happy about to waste time worrying it could go away.”

Learn more about Oil & Water, a short film following two Black towns in coastal Louisiana one year after Hurricane Ida’s landing.

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2023 thus far: sunlight, coffee, early morning boxing classes, actually finishing my TBR pile that has sat on my nightstand for months, the feeling of possibility opening up before me. All good things. I resume to my “normal” schedule of coursework and teaching next week, which also means that our normal newsletter operations return soon. Until then, here are things for your weekend…

Hub City Writers Project is hiring a new Executive Director. This is a dream job, people. Apply!

I’ve been back in South Carolina eating lots of Carolina Gold rice while visiting family. This is good news.

Everything about this thread! All the recs on environment, justice, and climate change in Appalachia.

Country Queers is teaming up with Out in the Open for a weeklong audio storytelling retreat in Vermont. Learn more and apply:

I too was sent The Atlantic article about the myths of Appalachia many times. Appodlachia does a great job unpacking it here.

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