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, better late than never, here is the January/February issue. We are just squeaking by under the wire for this to still be a January/February issue. Some issues just come together more easily than others. This one experienced significant delays with content, and three different planned features fell through or had to be tabled for a later issue. So rather than skip, we’re going ahead with what we did gather.
One of the most gratifying parts of this job is celebrating great news from our contributors. Our fiction editor John Dufresne’s latest novel, My Darling Boy, made the New Yorker Best Books of 2025 “Essential Reads” list and took home the Gold for General Fiction in the Florida Book Awards. Teddy Jones’s novel A Family of Good Women was one of the five finalists in Historical Fiction for the Sarton Award from Story Circle Network. Scott A. Jones’s novel The Moth was longlisted for the 2025 Shelf Unbound Indie Best Awards. Traci Neal, whose poem “Wild West Showdown of a Black Woman” graced our July/August issue, wrote a letter that will be featured in the Letters from America production at Carnegie Hall (see page 8 for more on that). Remy Powell, the MasterChef Junior Season 9 finalist who’s contributed recipes to a couple of our past issues, just released her first cookbook (see page 12).
In this issue: Neil Reisner pays tribute to the recently departed Bob Weir of The Grateful Dead. Neil Crabtree shows us how Wounded Heart of America (Tom Russell Songs) is still relevant today. Diana Finlay Hendricks reviews Bobbie and Bill Malone’s Riders in the Sky bio, and Yours Truly takes a deep dive into Jimmy McDonough’s long-awaited bio of country star Gary Stewart. We’re also proud to present short stories from Jason Marc Harris, James Ladd Thomas, a novel excerpt from Cynthia Neal Massey (courtesy of Stoney Creek Publishing), a poem from Peter Mladinic, an essay from Eleanor Connolly, and we are honored to publish a short story from fifth-grader Nylah Perlman. Her dad Cully Perlman frequently contributes to Real South/West and publishes the NovelMasterClass blog.
We also have a solid selection of recommended books and music, with a little extra emphasis in honor of Black History Month.
The next issue, March/April, will probably be closer to April unless we somehow magically get a bumper crop of submissions and/or revived features. We’re workin’ on it!