The Most Powerful Word

Rife with humor, horror, and hope, this symphony of narratives captures Mississippi's influence on world literature, showing how this complex and contradictory land has shaped the soul of storytelling like no other region its size in human history. Editors Joshua Clark and Judy Long orchestrated never-before-published interviews with many of the state's most acclaimed authors - some living, many long gone - in a conversation revealing the secrets to becoming a great writer and digging into the roots of Mississippi's singular literary DNA - how it formed and why it still matters. Their voices move from one theme to the next - from history to geography to storytelling to booze to race - touching on eras marked by the sorrow of segregation and the upheaval of integration. Woven throughout this tapestry are lesser-known-excerpts from the state's literature, archival material, historical accounts, and revealing statistics. Mississippi's literary heritage is more relevant today - with our continued racial reckoning - than ever. Indeed, The Most Powerful Word is a journey to understand not only how great writing is born, but how art, and so civilization, can evolve. What is it about this "little postage stamp of native soil" that has so defined the written word?