Here’s how the digital flipbook issue works: Click on the cover or the headline to get to the issue. In the issue window, the double-chevron icon at lower right brings up a reader window with a toolbar so you can zoom in and out, download a PDF, etc.
A few tips: The toolbar’s box icon fills your whole screen with a flipbook in spreads, which is easier to read on some screens, and the best way to view the magazine. You can navigate back to the Table of Contents by clicking the link at the bottom of any page. There’s also a gallery button that will let you scroll through page thumbnails.
If the flipbook doesn’t act right on your device or browser, we also have every article and story available as individual posts in the sidebar. (That also helps people find content in web searches, use it for promotional stuff, etc.)
Anyway, as promised, here is the holiday issue! This year, we are thankful for Diana Finlay Hendricks sharing her delicious pozole recipe from her upcoming cookbook, and for Tracey Broussard sending us some luscious new ideas for those sweet potatoes, all the way from Louisiana.
John Dufresne kicks off this batch of fiction with his own take on those holiday/year-end letters.
One of the best parts of this labor of love is having a legitimized excuse—actual duty, even—to find a great new writer or new book and then wave it around, yelling, “Hey, y’all have got to read this!” Such is the case with Cason E. O’Banion, who teaches writing at LSU and so graciously sent a copy of his heartfelt and often hilarious collection Fire Ants: Essays Around and About Texarkana, and agreed to let us run “Bonjour Y’all,” about a family Christmas White Elephant party that doesn’t go quite as intended.
We’re proud to welcome Maureen M. Welch back to these pages with “Pieces of 8,” about a group of Florida women on what turns out to be a pivotal cruise to Alaska.
Equal parts chilling and mordantly funny is Neil Crabtree’s “Off Yourself,” about the government’s frightening new healthcare plan. Frightening because it’s all too believable these days.
Then we book-end the fiction section (and the issue) with Scott A. Jones’s highly entertaining holiday letter from a New Mexico pot grower.
New Mexico also figures prominently in poems from Peter Mladinic and Aaron Smith, another welcome newcomer to this magazine. (And proof that we finally did get the submissions email fixed!)
The next issue, January/February, will be out in early to mid-January.
Thanks again, y’all. Enjoy the issue. All of us here at Real South/West wish you and yours a happy, healthy holiday season however you celebrate it, and a great start to 2026!