TUNES

I went on a weekend getaway with close pals this weekend, and we had the following on deep rotation: Bright Future by Adrianne Lenker, I Put A Spell On You by Nina Simone, and Tiger's Blood by Waxahatchee.

TOMES

My summer reading has gotten off to a magnificent start this week, as I devoured an advance copy of Split the Baby, a brave and empathetic memoir by Mississippi-based Lauren Rhoades. I followed that up with Deep Cuts, a rock-and-roll novel by Holly Brickley that felt to me like a revisiting of my college days in Missoula, Montana.

Several folks have recommended the non-fiction Is A River Alive?, by Robert MacFarlane, which currently awaits on my nightstand. And lastly, I've assigned myself a summer project of studying the legendary and now defunct DoubleTake Magazine, the back catalog of which was recently gifted to me by a friend.

TRAVELS

We're lucky to live only a couple hours drive from North Carolina's Atlantis Lodge. This family-owned motel in Pine Knoll Shores is a 1960s architectural marvel, set among ancient live oak trees, with ocean views from every room.

If we're going farther from home, I love any opportunity to get to western Montana. When I was in my 20s, I spent several years working in Glacier National Park, and the culture and landscape of that place continues to enthrall me.

Wherever we go this summer, my kids will be traveling with a disposable camera. While we all have digital cameras, I find that giving them a finite 27 frames leads them to experience a place differently. And bonus, they get to relive the experiences several weeks later when the drug store prints arrive.

Kate Medley is a North Carolina-based visual journalist documenting the American South.

Tunes: I’ve been listening to Mannequin Pussy on repeat and just discovered Cain Culto. Doechii invaded everyone’s summer. 

Tomes: just finished Abundance by Derek Thompson and Ezra Klein, currently reading Undesirability and Her Sisters by Tiffany Barber. 

Travels: The 28 mile biking trail at Gulf State Park, or the swamp boardwalk trail through Historic Blakely State Park.

Elizabet Elliott
Executive Director/Curator at Alabama Contemporary

Sheila Pree Bright

Atlanta based Lens based artist and author of #1960Now: Photographs of Civil Rights Activists and Black Lives Matter Protest

Tunes

Meditation music has been my sanctuary lately, providing me with peace and a sense of spiritual calm. One of my go-to tracks is Music of the Gods by my husband, Jeryl Bright. He produced it for my Breathe installation at Emory Libraries last fall and it still fills me with with good energy.

I'm also vibing with Andre ́ 3000's New Blue Sun album. It's a beautiful soundtrack for reflecting and daydreaming, and if I need a boost of energy, Kendrick Lamar's Not Like Us is on repeat. No question, this gets me moving in the morning.

Tomes

Books sparking my creativity right now

Finding God in all the Black Places: Sacred Imaginings in Black Popular Culture - Beretta E Smith-Shomade.

Making Gullah: A History of Sapelo Islanders Race and the American Imagination - Melissa Cooper

The artist Faith Ringgold's classic children's books are always an inspiration, exhibiting at the High Museum of Art in Seeing Children through October 12, 2025.

Travels

This summer, I'm blending work and play as I explore the coastal islands of South Georgia. It's a space that feels like an incubator for new ideas and a deeper connection to my spiritual roots.

Tunes

Richard’s Summer Playlist

Tomes

 Stephen Shore - Modern Instances: The Craft of Photography 

The Palgrave Handbook of the Southern Gothic by Susan Castillo Street and Charles L. Crow

Travel

Not much travel this summer, But....I love driving over to the Florida panhandle to visit family, make photographs and go to the beach. My favorite city I've visited in the past few years is Mexico City!

Richard McCabe is a curator, photographer and writer based in New Orleans. He was born in England and grew up in the American South. In 1998, he received an MFA in Studio Art from Florida State University. Since 2010, he has been the Curator of Photography at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art. He has organized and curated over thirty exhibitions including: Seeing Beyond the Ordinary, The Mythology of Florida, The Rising, Eudora Welty: Photographs from the 1930s - 40s, The Colourful South, Self-Processing: Instant Photography, Memory is a Strange Bell: The Art of William Christenberry and New Southern Photography.

Tunes

Dad Music 

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1PrCrKaWDqOMD2Go1LnY5G?si=129659dd56be46eb&pt=cef8d34fc9fa84de01a607b0a9e5e9bf  

Tomes

We live in a great era of Irish fiction.  Louise Kennedy's Trespasses is being made into a Netflix series starring Gillian Anderson, and the book is a sensual, intimate account of a troubled time written with real style.  Homer's Odyssey is the greatest travel book of all, and I plan to take Emily Wilson's recent translation with me as I go: ‘Tell me about a complicated man, Muse, tell me how he wondered and was lost’.  Check out her reading of the work, which brings that ancient world to our modern.  

I enjoy nature and landscape writing.  Barry Lopez's last book, Horizon, is a meditation on humanity and place that would be good company anywhere, taking the reader from the Oregon Coast to the Arctic and Australia.  Robert Macfarlane is one of the best contemporary nature writers and his new book, Is A River Alive?, follows the waterways of the world to ask what would it mean if we thought, as many indigenous cultures have, of the life they support as equal to and part of our own.  Macfarlane manages to be urgent, accessible and inspiring all at once, plus you'll get to look learned lying on the beach.  

Travels

As for places to go, well, we all know where we need to be when we get there.  Finding it is the trick.  For me, last summer on the island of Inisbofin, off the coast of Galway, was a glimpse of heaven by the sea, skylarks, seals, corncrakes and dolphins singing the body electric.  And Hunting Island, SC, is a hidden gem of the Atlantic coast, the nesting ospreys and traveling terns anchoring a beach that feels like the beginning of an adventure.  Otherwise, I try to be where I am, happy to watch the birds migrate north then south, the fireflies rising, the slow scent of summer in the evening.  May it bring you peace.

Hannah Israel

Visual Artist, Curator, Professor of Art, and Gallery Director at Columbus State University

My Studio Sounds + Summer Notes

Go-To Albums:
One album I always return to is And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out by Yo La Tengo, perfect for driving on the open road. The title is drawn from a quote by the visionary musician and poet Sun Ra: “At first there was nothing... then nothing turned itself inside-out and became something.”

The cover features a haunting twilight photograph by Gregory Crewdson: a solitary man stands in his driveway, bathed in an eerie beam of light, an image that captures the album’s quiet strangeness and emotional depth.

Back in NYC, one of the first exhibitions, The Heavenly Tree Grows Downward,  I helped install at the James Cohan Gallery featured Fred Tomaselli, Philip Taaffe, and Harry Smith. It was there I was introduced to Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music a formative discovery that still echoes in my collection.

If you want to join me in the studio, tune into my H-Studio Playlist, a mix of sounds, from dream pop to lo-fi folk and some-some.

Here’s a sweet album that I have been listening to hype up my dance moves (ha ha) and exploring trail blazer DJs. If you’re into dancehall, check out Sister Nancy’s One Two album. Sister Nancy is an icon in reggae and dancehall; She is the first female dancehall DJ to rise to international fame. Her iconic track Bam Bam became an anthem of empowerment and resistance, sampled across genres and generations.

Tomes:
My summer reading list is a mix of critical insight, poetic language, and cultural history.

Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous – A luminous novel exploring identity, trauma, and love, written as a letter across generations and cultural divides.

Umberto Eco, On Ugliness – The darker companion to On Beauty, this book dives into the monstrous and grotesque in art and culture, from medieval torture to kitsch and camp.

bell hooks, Communion: The Female Search for Love – A transformative reflection on love, vulnerability, and feminism, and how we rebuild our emotional lives.

Nancy Carter Crump, Hearthside Cooking – Found in a free bin in Savannah, this book traces Southern culinary traditions, African American foodways, and the evolution from hearth to stove part cookbook, part cultural archive.

Travel Notes:
Since the 1980s, Hilton Head Island, SC has been my family’s annual retreat, familiar and grounding. For solitude, I escape to St. George Island, FL, a quiet haven off the grid. Abroad, my favorite place to get lost is Italy for the wandering.

Tunes

Tunes for Travels curated by Emily Rena Williams

Cowboy Carter by Beyoncé

All Hail West Texas by The Mountain Goats

Tomes

Photographs Not Taken: A Collection of Photographers’ Essays by Will Steacy

Neither Fish nor Fowl: A Mercantile Jewish Family on the Rio Grande (Modern Jewish History) by Morris S. Riskind

The Yiddish Policemen’s Union: A Novel (P.S.) by Michael Chabon

Travels

Philadelphia, PA

Great Smokey Mountains National Park

Washington DC

Emily is an artist and educator interested in investigating communal and individual memory, identity, and placemaking through photography, writing, and audio. She holds a BA in fine arts and history from Haverford College, an MFA in photography from Louisiana State University, and is an incoming American Studies PhD student at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. Her current body of work documents Jewish communities past and present in the rural and small-town Deep South through photography and oral history interviews. She has support from the Southern Jewish Historical Society, Texas Jewish Historical Society, the LSU School of Art Graduate Student Scholarly & Creative Activity Support Fund, the Alabama Folklife Association, and the Texas State Historical Association.

Founder of the Do Good Fund

Tunes

Favorite album right now is Sadurn’s Radiator; their Audiotree Live EP is great, too.
Other recommended albums for the road this summer:
The Dead Tongues - Montana and Dust
Thomas Dollbaum - Wellswood
Nora Brown - Long Time to Be Gone
Ordinary Elephant - Honest

Tomes

Two highly recommended recent reads:

 Beth Ann Fennelly’s Heating & Cooling:  52 Micro-Memoirs

South to America:  A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation

In the stack for summer:

Native Speaker - Chang-rae Lee
Panther Gap - Jim McLaughlin
Silent Spring Revolution - Douglas Brinkley
Rising: Dispatches from the American Shore - Elizabeth Rush

Travels

Saint George Island or Cape San Blas, Florida - in June & July when the fly fishing for tarpon is world-class

Bozeman, Montana - to enjoy the town and nearby fishing on the Boulder River and spring creeks in Paradise Valley; culminating with a float trip down the upper Yellowstone River.

Founder of Ten Nineteen Gallery in New Orleans

Tunes

Listening inspired by the HBO documentary Stax Records Hits & Classics playlist on Spotify

Tomes

The Golden Mole and Other Vanishing Treasure, by Katherine Rundell, aptly described as a “passionately persuasive and sharply entertaining book” about wondrous and endangered creatures. 

Travels

Favorite travel — Naples, Italy, for the food, the beauty, the street life, and the layers of history. 

New Orleans based author of The American Daughters

Tunes

Albums I've been enjoying this summer:
NxWorries - Why Lawd?

Arooj Aftab - Night Reign

Lupe Fiasco - Samurai

Raveena - Where the Butterflies Go in the Rain

Tomes

Great books that I've read or will read this year:  
John Vercher - Devil is Fine

Asha Thanki - A Thousand Times Before

Phillip B. Williams - Ours

Lilly Dancyger - First Love

Clare Beams - The Garden

Travels

I mostly stay in New Orleans during the summer, but these are trips I like during this time of year:
Pass Christian, MS - for the cool beach water and Pass Christian Books

Nashville, TN - plenty of food, music, and bookstores to enjoy. 

Executive Director of the Hub City Writers Project in Spartanburg, South Carolina

Tunes

Meg's Playlist

Tomes

I'm very excited to read Concerning the Future of Souls by the inimitable Joy Williams, which contains 99 tiny stories about the angel of death, Azrael, as he deals with his day job as God's collector of souls. Published by the great Portland, Ore. indie publisher, Tin House Books. I'm currently editing a book called Hothouse Bloom for Hub City Press. We're calling it a millennial pastoral, both painterly and critical in its ideas about art, permaculture, subjectivity, and the natural world. It comes out August of 2025.

Travels

I'm biased, but probably my birthplace and where I'm headed next month, Cape Breton Island. The Canadian Maritimes are gorgeous, cool, and shockingly affordable, with glorious landscapes and culture. What's not to love?

Seattle-based photographer. 2024-2025 Do Good Fund Fellow

Tunes

Adair's Playlist

This is an oddball, eclectic mix that doesn’t make much sense together but it’s some of what we’re listening to this summer!

Tomes

I’m a big fiction reader, but nonfiction has been harder for me to get through these past few busy years as an artist-mother of young children. My brilliant and sardonic friend, also in early child rearing mode, described my list as "Important Nonfiction of the kind that stays half-read on my shelf too,” which made me laugh, and feel better about the tall stack of dog-eared books on my nightstand. All that to say, my reading list is usually more heavily weighted on the fiction side, but this month is an exception — still great reads!

(Nonfiction)

The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson

Art Monsters: Unruly Bodies in Feminist Art by Lauren Elkin

South to America: A Journey Below the Mason Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation by Imani Perry

Florida’s Living Beaches by Blair and Dawn Witherington

Strength to Love by Martin Luther King, Jr

(Fiction)

The Little Mermaid (with original illustrations) by Hans Christian Anderson

The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride

Fight Night by Miriam Toews

Travels 

Grayton Beach, FL – I’ve been coming down here since before I was born, and it’s still my haven even though I currently live about as far away as possible (Seattle, WA) Plenty of nice restaurants and shops have popped up in the area here along Highway 30A in recent years, but can’t say I have any restaurant or “entertainment” recommendations… when we come down here, we still vacation like my grandparents did as kids, old Florida style — kayaking in the dune lakes, surfing in the gulf, sandcastle building in the sugar white sand, big shrimp boils in the evenings, and plenty of beer. I’d recommend anyone to do the same, whether you’re flying solo, with friends, or kids!

Doe Bay Resort, Orcas Island, WA) — This is the most magical spot in the Pacific Northwest, in my opinion! Orcas, yurts, hiking, swimming, and clothing-optional outdoor soaking tubs overlooking the Salish Sea. And the farm-to-table restaurant on site is to die for. It’s very glamp-y, in the best kind of way. My now husband took me there on my first trip to visit him in Seattle, and I fell in love (and not just with him!) 

Artist, writer, curator, and founder of Institute 193 in Lexington, Kentucky

Tunes

Kentucky Bound: Farm + Garden Swimming Songs.

Tomes

Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy

The Natural Man by Ed McClanahan

Travels

I don't take vacations!

But my favorite spot would be Rome, Italy

Assistant Curator of Photography​ at The High Museum of Art

Tunes:

I am a firm believer that the song Sweet Disposition by The Temper Trap is the perfect start to any road trip. Test it out at the beginning of your next one.

Albums on rotation: Sunday Morning Put-Onby Andrew Bird; Hit Me Hard and Softby Billie Eilish; Sao Vicenteby Cesaria Evora;The Big Freezeby Laura Stevenson.

If podcasts are more your thing, Death of an Artist season 1 will pull you in.

Tomes

Currently reading: The Ongoing Moment by Geoff Dyer; Bachelors by Rosalind Krauss; A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles; The Hurting Kind: Poems by Ada Limon.

Next up: Like Love by Maggie Nelson

Read and recommended: Recollections of My Nonexistence by Rebecca Solnit (this should be required reading for everyone); Hold Still by Sally Mann

Travels

I grew up visiting Jekyll Island every summer, and the small quiet island is incredibly near and dear to my heart. It’s calmer than St. Simon’s and at seven miles long and flat like a pancake you can bike the entire island and experience a variety of landscapes and neighborhoods. Or just relax on the spacious beach with a book, which was always my primary activity there.

These days, I try to visit Arles, France in July each summer to experience the photography festival that takes over the whole city. It’s a photo lover’s paradise. Exhibitions are tucked everywhere—in unused churches, the storage space above a grocery store, catacombs underground, and so much more. It’s also a picturesque medieval town that Van Gogh lived in and where he painted some of his most iconic paintings, so it’s just all around dreamy.