After almost a year away from the Deep South, I’m finally back in North Carolina. I’ll be bouncing around the state for the better part of a week, tearing through the Hold Steady catalogue and conducting small n research for what I hope will be the book proposal that gets me a publisher’s ear in [...]

On the morning of June 11, Federal Express dropped a large package on my doormat. It consisted of two wholesale boxes of Big Dipper Ice Cream Cones, bonded, sealed and shipped from Memphis less than twenty four hours prior.
The name on the return address was Matt Allen, the man I’ve been proud to call my [...]