HALF-EMPTY MASON JAR

By LESLIE SMITH TOWNSEND

“Now there’s a car that costs $200,000,” my husband Loren says as we’re driving down the highway. “It’s Italian—a Maserati.”

I’m dozing in the passenger seat of our yellow Mazda wagon and barely register this information. Can’t he see I’m napping?

The fact that he knows the name and nationality of this car tells me it’s something he values. I don’t know the name of Italian sports cars because I don’t care. We tend to know the names of people, places and things we value.
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By LYNN PINKERTON

After a roller coaster of strange winter weather, I find myself catapulted into a string of juicy, bud-popping spring days. Blue-green days when my thoughts turn to seeds and the mysterious powers they hold inside their tiny, improbable-looking dried shells. Days when anything seems possible if I can wait long enough.

My niece Kara recently came for an out of town visit and proudly brought her latest second-grade project to show me. She carefully produced a small cup filled with a half inch of brown soil and intently pointed to the empty spot where she had planted a bean. Her bean. (more)

WILD HARVESTING

By WREN SMITH

Shopping around in your backyard will not only save you money, but will also provide a vitalizing dose of direct contact with the natural world. When I notice the parade of plants that pop up in my yard and along frequented routes, I often contemplate my next plate of nourishment from the wild.
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By JUDY LEE GREEN
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LIVING GREEN, SAVING GREEN

By BOBBI DAWN RIGHTMYER

Global warming and extreme climate change are having a huge impact on the condition of our world, and if we don’t do something soon, our grandchildren and great grandchildren may not have a world to call home. Individually, my family may not have a major effect on global warming, but we can change our lifestyle habits and do our part. If every family would take recycling and conservation seriously, then maybe together we can make a difference. We could even save some money in the process.
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The 2010 New Southerner Literary Contest is open to previously unpublished poetry, fiction and nonfiction from April 1 through October 1. Although the contest theme is open, we are especially interested in work that relates to our mission, which is promoting self-sufficiency, environmental stewardship and local economies. We are also interested in works by writers with a Southern connection, and works written with a Southern slant or that focus on Southern issues, people and places.

• Prizes: $200 for winners of Fiction, Nonfiction and the James Baker Memorial Prize in Poetry; publication in the literary edition; invitation to read at a special event;
• Finalists in all categories receive $15 and publication in the New Southerner Literary Edition;
• Submit fiction and nonfiction up to 5,000 words;Submit poems up to 100 lines;
• Contest fee: $10 per entry;
• Multiple entries are accepted;
• Simultaneously submitted entries are accepted as long as you notify us promptly if your work is accepted elsewhere; entry fee is not refundable;
• Postmark deadline: October 1;
• Winners will be notified by November 20;
• Finalists and winning entries will be announced in The New Southerner Literary Edition, available online and in print at www.newsoutherner.com in December.
• Final judges are Sena Jeter Naslund (fiction), Jason Howard (nonfiction) and Jeff Worley (James Baker Hall Memorial Prize in Poetry);
• Easy online submission process. Click here to enter.

FICTION

By LESLIE WHATLEY

Otto hauled me up out of the passenger seat of my mother’s Buick and slung my arm over his shoulder and dragged me over the grass because my legs weren’t working properly. Halfway across the lawn I looked up at his shiny red face, awash in Old Spice, and said, Get the fuck off of me, you fat-assed faggot. And I spit right on his cheek, a few white flecks of spit. Otto dropped me on the lawn and went away for a while, while I lay in the grass with the world spinning around me. My mother looked upside down, standing by the curb next to her Buick, crying into her hands, like she was praying.

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EXCERPT

From the new nonfiction book Will Jesus Buy Me a Double-Wide?: (’Cause I Need More Room for My Plasma TV), released this spring by Zondervan Books. Click here to read the interview with Spears.

By KAREN ZACHARIAS SPEARS

A red Dirt Devil vacuum cleaner sits out underneath the Live Oak. Around the corner weathered shoes, some covered in cobwebs, hang from a metal post. A wad of aluminum in a Ziploc bag, half-filled with water, hangs above the man’s head as he sits on his porch, watching television.
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FILM REVIEW

By BILL GOODMAN

At the very core of our national debate over climate change, alternatives fuels and the existence of so-called “clean coal technology” comes a new and enlightening documentary that challenges conventional thinking about the mining and operation of coal companies that few people ever see.
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Poilloux family turns international travels and love of the natural world into humanitarian mission

By CECILIA WOLOCH
Photos by Pierre Poilloux

I first met Pierre Poilloux and Isabelle Pieri more than 15 years ago, when I arrived in Paris with little more than a list of the names and phone numbers of friends of friends. They were acquaintances of a poet I knew who had met them several years prior in Indonesia, where they were all traveling.
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POETRY

By SUSANNAH NEVISON

I mean to say how he worked the rows for hours,
hoe steady in his hand, striking earth again and again—

how we watched night settle
as he leaned against the hoe,
wiping his brow with the back of his arm,
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POETRY

By JENNIFER WHEELOCK

Across the room, you
are a bowerbird, building
a nest from junk we hauled
from the roadside: warped wood,
dented metal, a painted canvas ditched
like an embarrassing memory.
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MUSIC REVIEW

By WANDA FRIES
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BOOK REVIEW

By ELIZABETH IANNACI
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