Vinegar and Char

<p>Yes there is barbecue but that's just one course of the meal. With <em>Vinegar and Char </em>the Southern Foodways Alliance celebrates twenty years of symposia by offering a collection of poems that are by turns as sophisticated and complex as vivid and funny and as buoyant and poignant as any SFA gathering.</p><p>The roster of contributors includes Natasha Trethewey Robert Morgan Atsuro Riley Adrienne Su Richard Blanco Ed Madden Nikky Finney Frank X Walker Sheryl St. Germain Molly McCully Brown and forty-five more. These poets represent past current and future conversations about what it means to be southern. Throughout the anthology region is layered with race class sexuality and other shaping identities.</p><p>With an introduction by Sandra Beasley a thought-provoking foreword by W. Ralph Eubanks and luminous original artwork by Julie Sola this collection is an ideal gift. Meant to be savored slowly or devoured at once these pages are a perfect way to spend the hour before supper with a glass of iced tea--or the hour after with a pour of bourbon--and a fitting celebration of the SFA's focus and community.</p>