Introducing the Good Folk Book Club

+ meet Ren Carroll, our newest team member.

Hello Folks,

I write to you today with an announcement I am particularly thrilled to make. Starting next week, we are officially launching the Good Folk Book Club. We’ll be reading through a selection of books focused specifically on rural America, Appalachia, and the American South. In addition to discussions of the book during our virtual meetings, we will also provide writing prompts and conversation guides to get you thinking about the work you’ve read. Exciting!

Book club meetings will take place on Zoom on the first Tuesday of every month at 7pm EST/6pm CST. All meetings are free and open to the public, whether you identify as Southern or not. You can register for our first meeting, next Tuesday, February 7th, here. We’ll be discussing Ava’s Man by Rick Bragg, a nonfiction story telling the story of Bragg's grandfather Charlie Bundrum. Set in the Appalachian foothills of Georgia and Alabama in the early to mid twentieth century, Ava's Man is a “family chronicle and human portrait so vivid you can smell the cornbread and whiskey."

With all of this, I am particularly excited to introduce you to our fearless book club leader, Ren Carroll, newest team member here at Good Folk. Ren is a senior at Auburn University working toward a B.A. in journalism with a minor in sociology. She runs the University’s literary arts magazine, The Auburn Circle, which has been awarded two Pacemakers from the Associated Collegiate Press. Ren is from the town of Fyffe on Sand Mountain in North Alabama. She grew up in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains and is interested in cataloging many of the colloquialisms, traditions, culture, and folk stories of this region through art and audio journalism. She currently holds an internship with Alabama State Council for the Arts where she helps produce content for their radio hour and podcast, Alabama Arts Radio, and is planning the 2023 Folklife in the South conference.

I feel very lucky to welcome Ren to the Good Folk team, and expect to see her name more frequently in this newsletter as book club gets underway. Below, you can read her own words on the Good Folk Book Club, and what’s in store.

Meet Ren Carroll, newest team member here at Good Folk!

Howdy, Good Folks.

My name is Ren Carroll and I’m a senior at Auburn University. I’m studying journalism and am from the Appalachian foothill region of North Alabama. Coming to college made me grapple with my southern identity and rural raising. I realized how much of our raisings I didn’t have in common with my peers and how little I saw my young days reflected accurately, or at all, in common popular media. Rather than turning away from these differences— I made the decision to lean in.

A guiding light in this journey has been the Southern media I have consumed in recent years. Books like Rick Bragg’s family narratives, the lyrics of S.G. Goodman, Jason Isbell, and many others, or podcasts like Good Folk, The Bitter Southerner, and Appodlachia.

That being said, one of my goals this year was to start an Appalachian book club with a reading list completely focused on Southern literature. Luckily, I got connected with Spencer and the rest of the wonderful people at Good Folk and we are making this happen.

Meetings will be on the first Tuesday of the month through Zoom at 7pm EST / 6pm CST. We will also have further reflections and even personal writing prompts that go in tandem with each month’s book in the Good Folk newsletter.

You don’t have to be Appalachian or even southern to join the club–all are welcome! In some small way, I hope this creates space for Southerners, Appalchians, and mountain folk to see ourselves reflected on pages in a way that makes us nostalgic for days of youth and proud of having grown from our communities.

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I couldn’t have said it better myself. Join us next week, or follow along through the newsletter. We’ll be rolling out a new book each month, so stay tuned. Here’s to the Good Folks telling the stories, writing the stories, and reading the stories. We love you.