level:deepsouth is an online anthology about growing up Generation X in the Deep South during the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s. The anthology is open to submissions of creative nonfiction (essays, memoirs, and reviews) and images (photos and flyers), as well as to contributions for the lists.
*last updated November 7, 2021
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* To add to this Deep Southern, Generation X bibliography, use the contact form on the about page.
The South and Her Children: School Desegregation, 1970–1971, published the Southern Regional Council
Bear: The Hard Life and Good Times of Alabama’s Coach Bryant by Paul “Bear” Bryant with John Underwood (1975)
The Improbable Rise of Redneck Rock by Jan Reid (1977)
A Government as Good as its People by Jimmy Carter (1977, reissue 1996)
Hearing before the United States Commission on Civil Rights in Memphis, Tennessee (May 9, 1977)
Evangelicals Face the Future: Scenarios, Addresses, and Responses from the “Consultation on Future Evangelical Concerns in Atlanta, Georgia, December 14-17, 1977
Country All-Timers: Complete Sheet Music Edition (1977)
A history of the Swimming Pool Qs, band formed in 1978
Around the spiral staircase: Recipes and lore from each Alabama county from the Alabama Legislative Wives Club, 1975-1979, edited by Virginia Pounds Brown
“Reagan Campaigns at Mississippi Fair” in The New York Times, August 4, 1980
“The 1981 lynching that bankrupted an Alabama KKK,” from history.com
An examination of population changes in Alabama’s Black Belt counties, 1960–1970 and 1970-1980 (1982)
“Is Rock Dead?” in People magazine, January 17, 1983
UFO Contact at Pascagoula by Charles Hickson (1983)
Looking for Hogeye by Roy Reed (1986)
The Maroon Bulldogs: Mississippi State Football by William Sorrells (1986)
Codename: Greenkil: The 1979 Greensboro Killings by Elizabeth Wheaton (1987)
“The murder of Kevin Ives and Don Henry” in 1987, in the Encyclopedia of Arkansas
This Poem is My Poem from Arkansas Poetry in the Schools, 1987
A Turn in the South by VS Naipaul (1989)
The Wrath of Hugo: South Carolina, September 21, 1989 (1989)
Party Out of Bounds: The B-52s, REM, and Kids who Rocked Athens, Georgia by Rodger Lyle Brown (1991, reissue 2016)
“On the Road with . . .The Velcro Pygmies” in Louisville Music News, May 1992
Building Consensus: A History of the Passage of the Mississippi Education Reform Act of 1982 by Andrew P. Mullins (1992)
South of Haunted Dreams: A Ride through Slavery’s Old Backyard by Eddy L. Harris (1993)
“The Devil Went Down to ‘Bama” in Spin, September 1993
The obituary of Lewis Grizzard in The New York Times, March 21, 1994
“In Prom Dispute, a Town’s Race Divisions Emerge,” in The New York Times, August 15, 1994
Disconnected by the Public Affairs Research Council of Alabama (1994)
Dixie Rising: How the South is Shaping American Values, Politics, and Culture by Peter Applebome (1996)
“1997: Alabama says Goodbye to Fort Payne’s June Jam” from WHNT TV
Feature on the mass school shooting in Jonesboro, Arkansas, in Time, April 1998
Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War by Tony Horowitz (1999)
“Frankie Goes to Alabama?” in Spin, September 2000
Dixie: A Personal Odyssey through Events that Shaped the Modern South by Curtis Wilkie (2001)
South to a New Place: Region, Literature, Culture, edited by Suzanne W. Jones and Sharon Monteith (2002)
Devil’s Knot: The True Story of the West Memphis Three by Mara Leveritt (2003)
Dixie Lullaby: A Story of Music, Race, and Beginnings in a New South by Mark Kemp (2004)
“It’s final for Vinyl” (closing of record store) on TuscaloosaNews.com, April 28, 2004
Dooley: My 40 Years at Georgia by Vince Dooley with Tony Barnhart (2005)
Challenging U.S. Apartheid: Atlanta and Black Struggles for Human Rights, 1960–1977 by Winston A. Grady-Willis (2006)
The Mississippi Public and Junior Colleges Story, 1972 – 2002 (2007)
“Voting Rights in Louisiana, 1982 – 2006” in the Review of Law and Social Justice, 2008
Clinton: 1940 – 1980 (Images of America series, 2008)
The 1998 closing of Rockafellas in Columbia, SC on columbiaclosings.com, November 19, 2008
“REM found early support in Columbia,” on JasperProject.com, October 11, 2011 (mentions Von Henmon’s)
Thirteen Loops: Race, Violence, and the Last Lynching in America by BJ Hollars (2011)
Alabama Getaway: The Political Imaginary in the Heart of Dixie by Allen Tullos (2011)
“Old School History of Skateboarding in Lafayette, UNCUT EDITION” on the blog Psyouthern, June 24, 2012.
“Reunion show memorialized Atlanta’s punk scene,” on ajc.com, August 11, 2012
Life After Death by Damien Echols (of the West Memphis Three) (2013)
“Remembering Oxford Books,” in Atlanta INtown, November 1, 2014
The Good Times Rolled: Black New Orleans, 1978 – 1982 by Bernard Hermann (2015)
“The little-known history of the War Eagle Supper Club” in al.com, December 29, 2015
“17 Alabama music festivals we wish we still had” on al.com, May 11, 2016
“For Ferris, each photo tells a story” in The Vicksburg Post, December 13, 2016
“Generation X and the Historic Black Freedom Struggle” by Aldon Morris in the Journal of Civil and Human Rights (Spring/Summer 2016), available through JSTOR
“Masquerade will officially close in August,” from Curbed Atlanta, June 2016
“‘Almost famous’ Alabama bands of the ’90s, their untold stories: Storm Orphans” on al.com, September 1, 2016
Blood in the Soil: A True Tale of Racism, Sex, and Murder in the South by Carole Townsend (2016)
“Members of Generation X most concentrated in Georgia,” on ajc.com, October 12, 2017
The Lynching: The Eipc Courtroom Battle that Brought Down the Klan by Laurence Leamer (2017)
Dawgs Gone Wild: The scandalous ’70s of UGA Football by Patrick Garbin and Steve “Shag” Davis (2017)
“City Stages: A look back at the Birmingham music festival” on al.com, June 17, 2018
“Alabama record stores of the past: gone but still loud” on al.com, November 2018
“The Nick: a dangerous history of Alabama’s coolest bar” on al.com, December 17, 2018
The South of the Mind: American Imaginings of White Southernness, 1960–1980 by Zachary J. Lechner (2018)
“Interview: Patterson Hood Opens Up about Adam’s House Cat,” in The Boot, October 18, 2018
Closed Ranks: The Whitehurst Case in Post-Civil Rights Montgomery by Foster Dickson (2018)
“Restaurants Birmingham misses most” on al.com, April 14, 2019
“Fly On, Fly Stone,” an obituary for The Nasty Bucks’ frontman, in Stomp and Stammer, July 18, 2019
“Cross Garden: Hell’s Warning Label, Prattville, Alabama” on RoadsideAmerica.com (2019)
Begin the Begin: REM’s Early Years by Robert Dean Lurie (2019)
Family Matters: James Dobson and Focus on the Family’s Crusade for the Christian Home by Hilde Løvdal Stephens (2019)
“Charlemagne Record Exchange closing after 42 years,” on al.com, December 2019
For the Hog Killing, 1979 by Tanya Amyx Berry (2019)
Cool Town: How Athens, Georgia Launched Alternative Music and Changed American Culture by Grace Elizabeth Hale (2020)
“Normandale: Where everybody knew your name” in The Montgomery Advertiser, February 2020
Goodbye, My Tribe: An Evangelical Exodus by Vic Sizemore (2020)
“‘The coldest day ever’ in South Carolina” on WMBF news, 2020 (news story about cold weather in 1985)
“The Home I Carry with Me” by Worth Parker, published in Bitter Southerner, 2020
“The Long Tail of Pylon, According to Pylon,” on npr.org, August 26, 2020
“Why can’t my friend sleep over?” by Brad Harper in the Montgomery Advertiser, February 9, 2021
“How Southern Miss QB Woodrow Lowe III is linked to Paul ‘Bear’ Bryant” in the Montgomery Advertiser, September 24, 2021
bhamwiki’s history of the 5 Points South Music Hall in Birmingham, Alabama
fiction writers from Generation X in the Deep South
Silas House, born 1971 in Corbin, Kentucky
Brad Vice, born 1973 in Tuscaloosa, Alabama
Jesmyn Ward, born 1977 and grew up in DeLisle, Mississippi
poets from Generation X in the Deep South
Sean Hill, from Milledgeville, Georgia
DeLana Dameron, from South Carolina
Natasha Trethewey, born 1966 in Gulfport, Mississippi
*To add a name to these lists of writers, use the contact form on the about page.