South's enduring past intrigues teacher By NELL LITTER FOCUS Staff Writer  Clarion Ledger June 15, 1983 Steve Anspach is a Northerner ch...

How many books does it take to be considered "well-read?"  I'll go to my grave, considering myself just the opposite.  Part of...

This project that I’m calling “Lies My Mother Never Told Me” has been openly banging around in my head for about a year and a half now.   Qu...

Because his life wasn't as full of so many personal tragedies as his friend Lewis, Tolkien never vacillated between belief and atheism a...

Mississippi never leads nor follows.  It intensifies whatever fears and prejudices are already present in the larger society as if to say, ...

While I haven't actually been asked to do this, I'm constantly trying to defend my novel, at least to myself.  Why is it worth writi...

It’s been about a year since I started letting the world read my daily journals or significant parts of them.  I began writing them forty-fi...

In 1935, a young actor named Humphrey Bogart (his real name) got his first starring role on Broadway in a play called "Petrified Fore...

It's come to my attention that there are those who have never known the name Hercule Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac.  Why should they kn...

Greenlights  My dear friend (and former football trainer) gave me a copy of Greenlights  by Matthew McConaughey.  I met McConaughey briefly ...

If you ever visited Eudora Welty's home, you'll know she loved gardening and flowers, so it's not surprising she often mentions ...

 In Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula, we are told that Harker procures a Carfax Abbey in Whitby, London, England, for his client, Count ...