Ed Southern

In December 1606, three ships carrying 144 passengers and crew sailed from London bound for a land that had already claimed more than its share of English lives. In May of the following year, little more than 100 men would disembark to settle on a small peninsula in the James River. Eight months later, only 38 men were still alive in the fort they had named Jamestown. Jamestown is well known as the first permanent English settlement in the New World; largely unknown is how fragile that permanence was. Most Americans have a general awareness of the dangers faced on any frontier, but not the particular hardships that confronted the Jamestown colonists--starvation, disease, conspiracy, incompetent leaders, and, of course, intermittent war with the neighboring Native Americans. This volume collects contemporary accounts of the first successful colony the first thirteen United States. The earliest text dates from 1605, two years before the first landing; the last describes events up to 1614, when the marriage of Pocahontas and John Rolfe secured a brief measure of peace for the beleaguered colony. Most of the accounts were written by the colonists themselves; others reflect the perceptions and expectations of investors and observers back in England, while two reveal the keen and hostile interest taken in the colony by England's chief rival, Spain. Several of them were written for widespread publication; others were either private letters or reports meant only for certain audiences. These narratives take the reader from the London stage to Powhatan's lodge, from the halls of royal power to the derelict hovels of the Starving Time.They show the modern reader what an adventure the founding of English America was--the desperate battles and fraught negotiations with Powhatan, the political intrigues in Europe and Virginia, the shipwreck that inspired Shakespeare's The Tempest, the discoveries that thrilled the colonists, the discoveries that broke their hearts. Ed Southern, a graduate of Wake Forest University, is a descendant of John Southern, who arrived in Jamestown in 1619. Ed Southern was a Wake Forest senior studying in London when he walked into the 200-year-old bookshop Hatchard's and realized how excited the possibilities presented by shelves full of books made him. After graduation, he worked at Reynolda House Museum of American Art. Hanging around after he finished setting up for lectures, concerts, performances, and classes gave him an excellent postgraduate education in the liberal arts, which came in handy later when he dropped out of graduate school. He went to work for one of the major bookselling chains and was a member of the training team sent to open the company's first store in London, a massive four-story media emporium on Oxford Street. It was a bit like coming full circle, but not quite. A year later, he left the bookstore and went to work for John F. Blair, Publisher, as the sales director. He presently serves as the executive director of the North Carolina Writers Network.

Accounts of the Virginia Colony, 1605-1614

The Jamestown Adventure

Jim Wilson

Scott Owens

Baynard Woods

Michael Knight

Chuck Jones

George Singleton

Shari Smith

Susan Cushman

Greg Herren

Wendy Reed

Judith Richards

Suzanne Hudson

Jennifer Horne

Jennifer Paddock

Chuck Cannon

Joe Formichella

Lari White

Michael Reno Harrell

Bev Marshall

Marlin Barton

Janet Nodar

The first Shoe Burnin' occurred on a cold winter's night years ago in Alabama. When the firewood ran out, a box of old shoes provided the assembled group of friends and artists with the fuel they needed to stock the hearth and share stories and songs late into the night. The bond forged that night began a tradition of fireside Shoe Burnin's. Naturally, many of the stories and songs involved shoes -- the places they've been and the people who wore them. Now, for the first time, these works have been collected in The Shoe Burnin', Stories of Southern Soul. The hardcover book includes a companion CD of spoken word and music that captures the Southern soul.

Stories of Southern Soul

The Shoe Burnin'

A wry and witty commentary on college sports and identity in the complicated social landscape of the South. Ed Southern, lifelong fan of the Wake Forest University Demon Deacons, the smallest school in the NCAA's Power 5, set out to tell the story of how he got tangled, in vines of history and happenstance, with the two giants of his favorite sport: the Crimson Tide and the Clemson Tigers. He set out to tell how a North Carolina native crossed the shifty, unmarked border between Tobacco Road and the Deep South. He set out to tell how the legendary Paul "Bear" Bryant, from beyond the grave, introduced him to his wife, a Birmingham native and die-hard Alabama fan. However, along the way to that story came 2020. In this time, his questions took on a new and urgent focus: Why do sports mean so much that so many will play and watch them in the face of a global pandemic? How have the South's histories shaped its fervor for college sports? Why has this fervor not led to a full embrace of racial equality? How have college sports shaped how southerners construct their identities, priorities, and allegiances--and how, in particular, do sports affect the southern white male identity? Why is North Carolina passionate about college basketball when its neighbors to the South live and die by college football? Does this have anything to do with North Carolina's reputation as the most "progressive" southern state, a state many in the Deep South don't think is "really" southern? If college sports really do mean so much in the South, then why didn't everyone down here wear masks or recognize that Black Lives Matter, even after our coaches told us to? Fight Songs explores the connections and contradictions between the teams we root for and the places we plant our roots; between the virtues that sports are supposed to teach and the cutthroat business they've become; between the hopes of fans and the demands of the past, present, and future.

A Story of Love and Sports in a Complicated South

Fight Songs

Ed Southern

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