<p>To meet Freeman Vines is to meet America itself. An artist, a luthier and a spiritual philosopher, Vines' life is a roadmap of the truths and contradictions of the American South. He remembers the hidden histories of the eastern North Carolina land on which his family has lived since enslavement. For over 50 years Vines has transformed materials culled from a forgotten landscape in his relentless pursuit of building a guitar capable of producing a singular tone that has haunted his dreams. From tobacco barns, mule troughs, and radio parts he has created hand-carved guitars, each instrument seasoned down to the grain by the echoes of its past life. In 2015 Vines befriends photographer Timothy Duffy and the two begin to document the guitars, setting off a mutual outpouring of the creative spirit. But when Vines acquires a mysterious stack of wood from the site of a lynching, Vines and Duffy find themselves each grappling with the spiritual unrest and the psychic toll of racial violence living in the very grain of America.</p>

Hanging Tree Guitars

Arts & Photography

Freeman Vines

Zoe Van Buren

Photography & Video

The Bitter Southerner

The Bitter Southerner Reader

VARIOUS

A Community in Black and White

Chuck Reece

<p>Food stories are often about so much more than what's on our plate.For 10 years, working with the best writers anywhere and always through the lens of a better South, we've published stories about the foods of our region. Some of these stories have earned our writers nominations and wins from the prestigious James Beard Awards. Last summer, The Bitter Southerner brought home the big prize for Food Coverage at the awards ceremony in Chicago. Rest assured, we celebrated big that night with both food and drink. Inside this anthology are 21 of our favorite stories from the magazine's first decade. You'll read about oyster tongers, fried burgers, white trash cooking, a legendary food critic, rosin potatoes, Natty Light, farmers facing climate change, making sorghum the right way, steamed sandwiches, Houston hip-hop and Chinese chicken, beans and rice, historic lunch counters, Tennessee tamales, lemon meringue pie, country music cookbooks, our complicated love affair with tomatoes, and the demise of a chicken. Writing that stirs the pot. Dig in.</p>

Food Stories: Writing That Stirs the Pot

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Books by The Bitter Southerner