For the next few months in Life Writers, we will study Rick Bragg’s Where I Come From as he shares a collection of essays, most of which were previously published in Southern Living and Garden & Gun magazines. Only in the South would you have a magazine called Garden & Gun.

This book is very different from others we’ve read in Life Writers. It is not a memoir but a collection of stand-alone, autobiographical essays grouped together loosely by content. Most essays are topical and often address larger themes than single memories or experiences. We will spend time this session studying the essay form.

Bragg is Alabama born and raised by his mother in a little town called Piedmont, down the road from Possum Trot. He began writing as a journalist and ultimately won a Pulitzer Prize while working for the New York Times. He credits his ability to write to being born into a family of storytellers whose main form of entertainment was spinning yarns.

Bragg’s folksy, down-home style of writing won me over when I first read his work. I started with Ava’s Man, published in 2002, and since then, I’ve read most everything he’s written. He’s a master of simile, authentic dialogue, laugh-out-loud humor, and knows how to tell a story true to the great Southern tradition.

I taught Ava’s Man to a class in Orlando in 2010. I wrote to Bragg for advice for my class members, and here’s what he said:

The only real advice I have is to show, not tell. Paint pictures, use description, tell stories instead of sermons.

I also asked if Bragg would be anywhere in Florida, and he was, so a gang of class members took a field trip to the Amelia Island Book Festival to meet him. He was warm and friendly to our group, answered all our questions, and encouraged us all to keep writing.

Here is the reading schedule for Where I’m From, and I look forward to discussing this book with you.

If you’d like to know more about Rick Bragg, here’s a link to an interview he did in 2020 with Garden & Gun magazine about Where I Come From.

In an interview for South Florida PBS’s Between the Covers, Bragg talks about his latest book, The Speckled Beauty: A Dog and His People. He describes this dog as “a terrible boy, a defiant, self-destructive, often malodorous boy, a grave robber and screen-door moocher who spends his days playing chicken with the FedEx man, picking fights with livestock, and rolling in donkey manure, and his nights howling at the moon.” Yet, he loves Speck and credits him with helping Bragg through some difficult times.

In addition to the ones I’ve already mentioned, here’s a list of some of Bragg’s twelve books I have on my bookshelf:

The Best Cook in the World: Tales from My Momma’s Southern Table
My Southern Journey: True Stories from the Heart of the South
The Prince of Frogtown
All Over but the Shoutin’

Please note that these lessons assume you have a copy of and have read or are reading Where I Come From.