The Bitter Southerner

4/1/26 — Published in Issue No. 14 On our nation’s 250-year anniversary, record numbers of American citizens are leaving for other countries that they find more safe, stable, and affordable. According to a recent article in The Wall Street Journal, this millions-strong phenomenon of people choosing to retire, study, and live outside our borders is surging — with 180,000 Americans voluntarily leaving in 2025.

Light breaks the window. You don’t recognize light as a hard hitter. Moonlight moonlighting as meteorite, curtain rod come loose, cabinet collapsed at dawn, a sign you must go out into the world, received by the reproduction of gardenias and orange blossoms hungry for visitors. Love bends the balcony in water weight. Once, a neighbor cried out for help, collapsed under the collapsed trellis of passion flowers. Maybe the best omen for moderation is the thing we love pinning us down.

In 2012, in a small suburb 10 minutes outside of Memphis, a 14-year-old girl gives herself four more years in the United States. At 18, she will leave America, move to Paris, and live and work as a pastry chef. This isn’t a young girl’s dream. It’s her plan.

Living through times of unrestrained violence calls for both outward resistance and inner resilience. One Nashville-based Jungian analyst and psychoterapist would like us to think about these things. Set the timer America, your session is about to begin. May 11, 2026 — Originally Published in Issue No. 13 of The Bitter Southerner Magazine We’re living in a time of systemic mental, emotional, and bodily violence.

We are launching a new publication, a photography journal, that will publish four times a year. Each volume of Humans/Being will focus on one photographer and one body of work — photography that represents a perfect picture of that artist's community ... of their United States of America.

April 28, 2026 — Originally Published in Issue No. 13 of The Bitter Southerner Magazine What is going on here? Where are we? … my friends and I wondered aloud as we drove around what Google Maps told us was the Little Debbie Park in Collegedale, Tennessee. All we could see was a brand-new but vacant entertainment pavilion with arbors stretching out in several directions over concrete sidewalks that led right back to themselves.

April 28, 2026 — Originally Published in Issue No. 13 of The Bitter Southerner Magazine I hadn’t been inside the house in nearly 15 years, but when I stepped through the back door last year, my body remembered it before my mind did. The den with its wooden paneling and low ceiling. The tiny kitchen, still marked by the same home-phone connection. The garage with its slanted floor, once half-converted into a playroom. The light still fell the same way across the living room.

Since 1883, high atop the Cumberland Plateau, a few lucky families have spent summers in their private cottages at the Monteagle Assembly. Dr. Katharine K. Wilkinson, a third-generation devotee of Tennessee’s famously cloistered community, has memories that both soothe and unsettle her. Was the summer bliss she remembers “freedom” or something else? Can you smell it? That scent that carries you back to summertime. The one you can ride to that place, those scenes, even at the faintest whiff.

Americans have always moved away. These days, expat Lindsey Tramuta writes, record numbers are leaving or planning to leave in search of health care, civil rights, freedoms, even safety. Does exiting the United States mean you’ve given up? Not necessarily. 3/14/26 — Originally Published in Issue No. 13 of The Bitter Southerner Magazine Gillian Longworth McGuire left Knoxville at 17, but when she closes her eyes, she can still hear the cicadas in her old backyard.