CrossRoads: A Southern Culture Annual is a new publication dedicated to the interdisciplinary study and artistic appreciation of the South (broadly defined) and Southern culture. To be published as an annual book by Mercer University Press, CrossRoads: A Southern Culture Annual will continue the editorial approach of CrossRoads: A Journal of Southern Culture, a semi-legendary periodical originally published in the early 1990s by a dedicated group of graduate students affiliated with the University of Mississippi’s Center for the Study of Southern Culture. The original periodical version of CrossRoads featured previously unpublished material by many of the leading scholars and artists committed to interpreting and celebrating the South, including A. R. Ammons, James Dickey, William Ferris, Ann Fisher-Wirth, Wayne Flynt, Ernest Gaines, David Galef, Eugene Genovese, Alex Haley, Fred Hobson, Jack Temple Kirby, Robert Morgan, Tom Rankin, John Shelton Reed, and Joel Williamson.

The first volume of CrossRoads: A Southern Culture Annual, published in April 2004, features new work by such scholars and artists as G. Wayne Dowdy, Allean Hale, M. Thomas Inge, Dorothy Hampton Marcus, Mendi Lewis Obadike, Ron Rash, and Brenda Witchger. The scholarly work in the first volume of CrossRoads explores such topics as Southern language, literature, visual art, music, and food, and elucidates Southern perspectives on religion, politics, race, ethnicity, gender, and regional identity. That volume also contains compelling creative work from a number of leading writers and visual artists from the South.

To order copies of the first volume of CrossRoads: A Southern Culture Annual, please contact Mercer University Press via phone (toll free) at 800-637-2378, ext. 2880 or 800-342-0841, ext. 2880 (in Georgia), or by e-mail at mupressorders@mercer.edu.