This is where you’ll find the full interviews, hear readings, and get to know the stories behind the stories in each issue – including recordings of INSIDE VOICES and ANNIE’S ANTICS!
Watch for new stories each week on the new YouTube channel or listen to the stories on the new Podcast. Between the pages!
Donna Everhart is full of surprises and a pleasure to talk with!
We covered lots of topics, including her writing process, what she’s been reading, what’s on her to be read list, what she’s working on, and lots of encouraging words for fellow writers. She is an inspiration!
Donna is the USA Today bestselling author of authentic, vivid Southern fiction, including the Southeastern Library Association Award-winning The Road to Bittersweet, Indie Next Pick and Amazon Book of the Month, The Education of Dixie Dupree, The Forgiving Kind, The Moonshiner’s Daughter, and her most recent, The Saints of Swallow Hill. Her sixth novel, currently untitled, will be released February 2024.
I’ve been a fan of Mary’s music for years and I was very excited to get my hands on her book. I reached out to her to see if she had time to share the story behind the stories and I couldn’t believe my luck. She was on a gig, she said, but she would be more than happy to talk when she got back to Nashville. A week later, just off a thirty day tour in Europe and the UK Mary was a little jet lagged but that didn’t stop her from finding time to talk with WELL READ. Mary Gauthier’s list of achievements for her songwriting and performances are a mile long. She’s been racking them up since 1998 but here’s a few of her latest awards. In 2019 her album, Rifles & Rosary Beads, was nominated for a Grammy for Best Folk Album of the Year, was named Best Album of The Year at the International Folk Music Awards, was nominated for Album of the Year by The Americana Music Association, and Mary was named International Artist of the Year by The Americana Association UK. In 2018, Rifles & Rosary Beads was named #1 Best Singer/Songwriter Album of 2018 by LA Times and War After The War was named #1 Song of the Year by NPR/Malcolm Gladwell. Mary’s songs have been recorded by dozens of artists, including Jimmy Buffett, Dolly Parton, Boy George, Blake Shelton, Tim McGraw, Bettye Lavette, Mike Farris, Kathy Mattea, Bobby Bare, Amy Helm and Candi Staton and have appeared extensively in Film and Television, most recently on HBO TV’s Yellowstone. In 2021 Mary published Saved by a Song: The Art and Healing Power of Songwriting. Part memoir, part philosophy of art, and part nuts and bolts of songwriting, Saved by a Song is a discussion of the art and healing power of songs and songwriting. It hit the shelves with some great endorsements like these: “Generous and big-hearted, Gauthier has stories to tell and worthwhile advice to share.” ―Wally Lamb, author of I Know This Much Is True “Think Anne Lamott meets Julia Cameron meets Patti Smith… Anyone who can still write from the heart about writing from the heart after being in the music business as long as Gauthier has is the real deal. Her book invites seasoned artists to deeper authenticity, new artists to deeper craft and all readers to deeper self-reflection.” ―BookPage “A thoughtful meditation by one of the finest practitioners around on what makes a song matter and the hard lessons she’s learned…This is a treasure of a book as well as a love letter to songs and songwriters and the people who listen to them.” ―Booklist (Starred)
An invitation to consider…
“Interviewing” George is anything but difficult. You don’t interview George, you listen. He is a master story-teller who has the ability to turn day-to-day events into a story, and if you pay attention you’ll get the answers you wanted without asking the questions. But before we get to the interview, let me introduce him. George Singleton is the author of nine short story collections, These People Are Us: Stories, The Half-Mammals of Dixie, Why Dogs Chase Cars: Tales of a Beleaguered Boyhood, Drowning in Gruel, Stray Decorum, Between Wrecks, Calloustown, Staff Picks, and You Want More. Two novels, Novel and Work Shirts For Madmen. And one non-fiction that, per George, is a weird book on writing advice he wrote on a dare titled Pep Talks, Warnings, And Screeds: Indispensable Wisdom And Cautionary Advice For Writers. Over two hundred of his stories have appeared in journals such as the Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, Playboy, Georgia Review, The Southern Review, Cincinnati Review, Tin House, Garden & Gun, and elsewhere. He is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize and a Guggenheim fellowship. In 2013, Singleton accepted the John C. Cobb Endowed Chair in the Humanities at Wofford College where he currently teaches fiction writing and editing. Singleton was inducted into the Fellowship of Southern Writers in April 2015 and awarded the John William Corrington Award for Literary Excellence in 2016.
Vaccination appears in the collection, You Want More: Selected Stories of George Singleton. “Singleton brings together his best work along with one new story in this smashing collection that combines satire, tragicomic premises, and small-town South Carolina locales. Items as innocuous as caulk or a VHS tape become the focus of droll yet moving meditations on the foibles of modern life or the misery of a marriage’s disintegration…Fans and newcomers alike will rejoice in reading these highlights from a Southern literary master.” ―Publishers Weekly, Starred
This is an essay from George’s upcoming book of essays, ASIDES, coming out later this year. “Over his career, George Singleton has written unruly characters living unruly lives. His depictions of the American South―in particular the everyday tumult of white blue-collar men and women struggling to come to terms with this strange and chaotic world― are both tragic and comic, heartbreaking, surreal, and―when least expected―weirdly ebullient. Singleton is a brilliant storyteller; his vision is crystal clear and wonderfully warped.” ―Julianna Baggott, author of Burn
George talks a little bit about this piece before his reading. What Could’ve Been – coming out in a collection of essays this fall. “In his brilliant mix of comedy and tragedy and deep tenderness for the most “minor” characters among us, George Singleton is nothing less than the Shakespeare of South Carolina.” ―Margaret Renkl, author of Late Migrations
Daily Grind is an essay from George’s upcoming collection, Asides, coming out later this year. He starts this reading off with, “It’s kinda mean spirited, but I don’t care – I’m mean.” ENJOY! “Singleton’s fellow writers regard his work with an affection bordering on awe, but both comic writing and short fiction are underrated forms, which is how Singleton has become something like the John Prine or Tom Waits of Southern scribes: revered, honored, and esteemed but almost criminally underappreciated. Indeed, Singleton’s work is too original, too wildly hilarious and inventive to be imitated.” ―Chapter16
