The Honorable General Beauregard Lee of the great state of Georgia was right on the money again.

 Spring has come early this year.

The fourth Short Story America Festival and Conference is this weekend, February 24-26. This celebration of short stories ­– the great original American literary art form ­– will feature authors from far and near, reading and discussing short fiction (including oral storytelling this year), the adaptation of short stories for film, discussing the writing process for those interested in developing their craft as fiction writers, and signing copies of the acclaimed anthologies published by Beaufort’s own Short Story America.

A Day to Wander and Love the Land...

“Place and land and nature: how we tie these things together is critical to our sense of self-purpose and our fit in the world. They are the trinity. This is true for people everywhere, but nowhere is it truer than in the South.”

—J. Drew Lanham, excerpt from The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature

By Margaret Evans, Editor

Last Thursday, slightly after lunchtime, everybody and their brother was watching Donald Trump’s press conference.

I know this, because I logged onto Facebook right around then and found my newsfeed littered with real-time commentary. I say “littered,” because what confronted me was a stream of blow-by-blow reportage from ticked-off armchair critics, and certain words just make you feel battered even when they’re not aimed at you. I would quote some of them here, but as you’ve often heard me say . . . my mom reads this column.