Holding On To Nothing

During the 1930s, the Works Progress Administration sent workers to interview over 2,200 former slaves about their experiences during slavery and the time immediately after the Civil War. The interviews conducted with the former Louisiana slaves often showed a different life from the slaves in neighboring states.

Louisiana was unique among the slave-holding states because of French law and influence, as demonstrated in the standards set to govern slaves in Le Code Noir. Its history was also different from many Southern states because of the prevalence of large sugar cane as well as cotton plantations, which benefited from the frequent replenishment of rich river silt deposited by Mississippi River floods. At Frogmore Plantation, which is located in Louisiana across the Mississippi River from Natchez, co-owner Lynette Tanner has spent 16 years researching and interpreting the slave narratives in order to share these stories with visitors from around the globe. The plantation offers historical re-enactments, written by Tanner, that are performed by descendants of former Natchez District slaves.

In this collection, Tanner gathered interviews conducted with former slaves who lived in Louisiana at the time of the interviews as well as narratives with those who had been enslaved in Louisiana but had moved to a different state by the 1930s. Their recollections of food, housing, clothing, weddings, and funerals, as well as treatment and relationships echo memories of an era, like no other, for which America still faces repercussions today.

Lynette Tanner and her husband own Frogmore Plantation, a working cotton plantation and gin distillery, as well as Terre Noir, a second plantation in Concordia Parish. Tanner has received numerous awards for her preservation efforts and her promotion of Louisiana tourism. Tanner was the author and narrator of “The Delta:  A Musical History” for the Smithsonian traveling exhibit which was on display in the La. Delta area.

2023 VCU Cabell First Novelist Award Long List

2023 Book of the Year, Southern Literary Review

Named a 2023 Great Group read, Women’s National Book Association

A South Carolina family endures one life-shattering day in 1961 in a town that lies in the shadow of a nuclear bomb plant.

It’s November 1, 1961, in a small town in South Carolina, and nuclear war is coming. Ten-year-old Wilson Porter believes this with every fiber of his being. He prowls his neighborhood for Communists and studies fallout pamphlets and the habits of his father, a scientist at the nuclear plant in town.

Meanwhile, his mother Nellie covertly joins an anti-nuclear movement led by angry housewives—and his father, Dean, must decide what to do with the damning secrets he’s uncovered at the nuclear plant. When tragedy strikes, the Porter family must learn to confront their fears—of the world and of each other.

Like most progressive Southerners, Hal Crowther is decidedly angry about current social and political events, but few writers are more able than he to articulate the problems, the issues, and even the bitter humor of our present situation.

Hal Crowther is a writer who has made a long and illustrious career with sharp political and social commentary in the pages of national and regional outlets, from Time to the Atlanta Constitution to the Oxford American. In this collection, Crowther turns his attention once again to the Bible Belt, the American South, where he finds plenty of fodder for the blues: the descent from George Washington to Donald Trump, the difficulty of finding civil political discourse in a world where folks spew vitriol from behind their keyboards, Klan members marching down the street in Crowther’s hometown, the infantilization of culture (starring Mark Zuckerberg), the continued intertwining of religion and governance, and more.

Commentator Gene Nichol offers inspiration and ideas for blazing a progressive path forward in North Carolina, a decidedly purple state.

In the 2024 election cycle, there was good news and bad news for North Carolina progressive politics. The people elected a Democratic Governor, Lt. Governor, Attorney General, and managed to obtain a tiny toehold with the General Assembly. However, Trump prevailed in the state and nationally—leaving a large number of progressives with a lot of political energy and no place to go. So, what now? What next? Gene Nichol writes to those who are well aware of the issues that North Carolina and the country at large now face. This book tackles the all-important question of how progressives can continue to move the state forward, tackling the opposition and their own flagging spirits.

A timely and whole-hearted poetry collection by acclaimed author and Poet Laureate of Kentucky Silas House, including the poem read at Governor Andy Beshear’s 2023 inauguration.

Silas House is known throughout the Southeast as a quintessential person of letters—a novelist, a music journalist, environmental activist, and columnist—and now Poet Laureate of Kentucky. His first full-length collection of poetry blends his Appalachian upbringing and ongoing relation to the natural world with his keen observation of his surrounding culture. Returning to his touchstone subjects, Silas recalls wild places, echoes stories from a lingering and living past, and explores an abiding connection to family, friends, and fellow artists.

Fifteen of North Carolina’s finest writers reimagine and reclaim the stories of the ghosts who have haunted all corners of the state.

North Carolina ain’t what it once was: forests and fields have given way to suburbs and vacation homes, textile mills to high tech, tobacco farms to tourism. That doesn’t mean, though, that the ghosts of the Old North State have gone away.

In this anthology, readers might glimpse some of the ghostly apparitions, headless fiends,  and creepy hollers they heard about around their childhood campfires. Now, fifteen of the state’s finest contemporary prose writers and poets have reimagined these stories—bringing us fresh tales that are bound to scare the living daylights out of us all over again.

Contributors include: Michele Tracy Berger on the ghosts of the Great Dismal Swamp, Wiley Cash (and his daughters) on the Maco Light, Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle on the Raven Mockers, Tyree Daye on family hauntings, Jeremy B. Jones on the phantasms of Chimney Rock, Ed Southern on the Jack Tales and the Devil’s Tramping Ground, Ross White on the Little Red Man of Old Salem, and many more.

The Devil's Done Come Back reclaims these old ghost tales as living stories, told and re-told to frighten and delight.