Burnaway Reader 2024: by hook 

Publisher: Burnaway
Year: 2024
Pages: 

What does it mean to be lured in, and how do you discern when it’s best to wait or bite? In the fifth edition of Burnaway’s Reader: by hook – drawn from the phrase “by hook or by crook” – we contemplate dubious choices, examine inherited histories, and grapple with shifty codependence between people and place in the South. Addressing our 2023 editorial themes, Conspiracy, Camouflage, and Current, by hook continues our examination of our essential question: What is the South? A form of bait itself, the texts spotlight the region’s double-edged landscape through fourteen writers’ personal and social deep dives.

Included in this volume are stories on the existence of AI-generated paradigms in conversation within the work of Houston-born artist Gray Foy; Suzanne Césaire’s writing legacy in the Lesser Antilles; the speculative creative practice of Firelei Báez and the Ciguapa as an undaunted state of being on view in Arkansas; yard shows in Mississippi and the late Mary Tillman Smith; Mel Chin and the Audubon in the region; a tantalizing performance by Thew Smoak through the North Carolina woods; futurists and fortune-tellers in the form of New Orleans artist and writer Kristina Kay Robinson and Demian DinéYazhi’; desperation in the music of a pop singer-songwriter from Florida; and an exclusive poster by Atlanta-based artist Kelly Taylor Mitchell.