Fine Print

Mesha Maren explores love, addiction, and gender identity in her latest novel, Shae

By Ashley Warlick

I CAME OF AGE AS A WRITER in what people called the New South, which lived someplace between Dolly Parton and Breece Pancake, storytellers who celebrated and elevated the rich and strange mix of breakfast off your grandmother’s china before your shift at the Kroger or the university or the gun store—wherever it became clear that the past wasn’t dead or really even past, and you were stuck in it.