Ace Atkins
ACE ATKINS is the New York Times bestselling author of twenty-one novels, including The Fallen and Robert B. Parker’s Little White Lies. Atkins has been nominated for every major award in crime fiction, including the Edgar three times and twice for novels about former U.S. Army Ranger Quinn Colson. A former newspaper reporter and SEC football player, Atkins also writes essays and investigative pieces for several national magazines, including Outside and Garden & Gun. He lives in Oxford, Mississippi, with his family, where he’s friend to many dogs and several bartenders.
Seth Avett
Musician TIMOTHY SETH AVETT is a founding member, along with his brother Scott, of the Avett Brothers. He grew up in Concord, North Carolina.
John M. Barry
JOHN M. BARRY is a prize-winning and New York Times best-selling author of books including Rising Tide, The Great Influenza, and Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul. He lives in New Orleans.
Roy Blount, Jr.
ROY BLOUNT, JR.’S most recent books are Save Room for Pie and Alphabetter Juice: Or, The Joy of Text. He writes the End of the Line column for Garden & Gun and is a panelist on NPR’s Wait Wait . . . Don’t Tell Me!
Rick Bragg
RICK BRAGG is a best-selling author, which is a good thing, since if he fished for a living, he would starve to death. He lives in Alabama and teaches nonfiction writing at the University of Alabama. His most recent books are an award-winning biography of Jerry Lee Lewis and a collection of essays called My Southern Journey.
Nic Brown
NIC BROWN is the author of the novels In Every Way, Doubles, and Floodmarkers. Formerly the John and Renée Grisham writer in residence at the University of Mississippi, he is currently an assistant professor at Clemson University.
Monte Burke
MONTE BURKE is the New York Times best-selling author of Saban: The Making of a Coach; 4th and Goal: One Man’s Quest to Recapture His Dream; and Sowbelly: The Obsessive Quest for the World Record Largemouth Bass. He is also a contributing editor at Garden & Gun and Forbes.
Marshall Chapman
MARSHALL CHAPMAN is a Nashville-based singer-songwriter, author, and actress. She has written for Garden & Gun, Oxford American, W, Southern Living, Performing Songwriter, The Bob Edwards Show, and Nashville Arts Magazine.
Jennifer V. Cole
Mississippi-born JENNIFER V. COLE is a writer and editor based in New Orleans. After thirteen years on staff at Travel + Leisure and Southern Living, she embraced the gypsy ways of freelance life. Her work has appeared in Garden & Gun, Esquire, Fast Company, Eater, Gravy, and more, including Bake from Scratch, a magazine she launched in 2015.
James Conaway
JAMES CONAWAY is the author of Memphis Afternoons and other books. His latest, Napa at Last Light, will be published in early 2018.
John Currence
CHEF JOHN CURRENCE drinks whiskey, tells stories, and loves Popeyes fried chicken. He lives in Oxford, Mississippi, with his delightful wife, Bess, and insanely bossy daughter, Mamie.
Wayne Curtis
WAYNE CURTIS is the author of And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails and has written frequently about cocktails, spirits, travel, and history for many publications, including the Atlantic, the New York Times, Imbibe, Punch, the Daily Beast, Sunset, the Wall Street Journal, and Garden & Gun. He lives in New Orleans.
David DiBenedetto
DAVID DIBENEDETTO is the editor in chief of Garden & Gun, where he oversees all of the magazine’s media platforms. He is the editor of G&G’s New York Times best-selling books The Southerner’s Handbook, Good Dog, and The Southerner’s Cookbook, and also the author of On the Run: An Angler’s Journey Down the Striper Coast.
John T. Edge
JOHN T. EDGE, founding director of the Southern Foodways Alliance at the University of Mississippi, began contributing to Garden & Gun in its first year of publication. He is the author of, among other books, The Potlikker Papers: A Food History of the Modern South.
Jenny Everett
JENNY EVERETT is a Charleston, South Carolina–based journalist covering food, health, fitness, and parenting. She writes the What’s in Season column for Garden & Gun and inspires parents to cook with their children at her website, mylilsous.com.
Tom Foster
A longtime magazine editor and writer, TOM FOSTER is editor at large of Texas Monthly and Inc. magazines, and a frequent contributor to Garden & Gun. He lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife, son, and dog.
Allison Glock
ALLISON GLOCK has been a magazine journalist and author for twenty-plus years. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, the New York Times Magazine, Esquire, Rolling Stone, Men’s Journal, Marie Claire, GQ, the New Yorker, and many other publications. Her poetry has appeared in the New Yorker and the Portland Review. She is currently a senior staff writer for ESPN the Magazine and ESPNW. She has written seven books, including the acclaimed Young Adult novel series Changers, and received the Whiting Award for her book Beauty Before Comfort, a memoir of her grandmother’s life in West Virginia and a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.
Vanessa Gregory
VANESSA GREGORY is a frequent Garden & Gun contributor who has also written for Harper’s and the New York Times. She was a Mississippi Arts Commission fellow in literary nonfiction and is an assistant professor of journalism at the University of Mississippi. She lives in Oxford, Mississippi, with her husband, daughter, and dog.
Mike Grudowski
MIKE GRUDOWSKI is the project editor for S Is for Southern and a contributing editor at Garden & Gun. He has worked as a senior editor and written for Outside, Caribbean Travel & Life, Rocky Mountain, and New England Monthly. His writing has also appeared in Men’s Journal, the New York Times Magazine, Smithsonian, Sunset, Fortune, and other magazines.
Robert Harling
ROBERT HARLING is a playwright and screenwriter. His plays and films include Steel Magnolias, Soapdish, The First Wives Club, Laws of Attraction, and The Evening Star. He is a graduate of Tulane University Law School and lives in Natchitoches, Louisiana.
Jessica B. Harris
JESSICA B. HARRIS is a professor, lecturer, and consultant, and the author, editor, or translator of sixteen books. Her most recent book is My Soul Looks Back: A Memoir.
Bill Heavey
BILL HEAVEY was born in Birmingham because his mother, who had married a naval aviator from the North, couldn’t abide the thought of having a Yankee child. Heavey is a “generalist,” a polite way of saying that while he is not particularly skilled at anything, he is adept at glossing over that and directing your attention elsewhere.
Amanda Heckert
AMANDA HECKERT is a deputy editor at Garden & Gun. A native of Inman, South Carolina, she previously served as the editor in chief of Indianapolis Monthly and as a senior editor at Atlanta magazine. She lives in Charleston with her husband, Justin, and their dog, Cooper.
Justin Heckert
JUSTIN HECKERT’S nonfiction stories have appeared in Garden & Gun, GQ, ESPN the Magazine, Esquire, the New York Times Magazine, Grantland, Oxford American, Atlanta, and elsewhere. He has twice been named Writer of the Year by the City and Regional Magazine Association.
Matt Hendrickson
MATT HENDRICKSON is a contributing editor at Garden & Gun, where he handles much of the magazine’s music coverage. He was formerly a staff writer at Rolling Stone, and his writing has also appeared in Details, Entertainment Weekly, and Parade. He lives in Athens, Ohio, but prefers Athens, Georgia, where his ideal night is spent eating the Frogmore stew at Five & Ten before hitting a show at the 40 Watt Club.
Jack Hitt
JACK HITT began his journalism career as the editor of Porter-Gaud School’s sixth-grade literary magazine, the Paperclip, where he edited some of the finest haiku, penned by louche preteen sons of long-ago fallen gentry, in all of South Carolina’s Lowcountry. That pretty much finished him off as an editor, and he now sticks to writing occasional magazine articles and, if food is scarce, a book.
Patterson Hood
Musician and writer PATTERSON HOOD is a member of Drive-By Truckers, whose most recent album is American Band. He was born and raised in the Muscle Shoals area of Alabama.
John Huey
JOHN HUEY, a native of Atlanta, has worked as a journalist for forty-five years, twenty-four of them at Time Inc., where he retired as editor in chief in 2012. He and his wife, Kate, live on Wadmalaw Island outside Charleston, South Carolina.
Elizabeth Hutchison
ELIZABETH HUTCHISON is an associate editor at Garden & Gun. A native of Charleston, South Carolina, and graduate of Clemson University, she also contributed to The Southerner’s Handbook and produces the magazine’s annual Made in the South Awards.
Jason Isbell
JASON ISBELL is a Nashville-based singer-songwriter from Green Hill, Alabama, and a Grammy Award winner. His most recent album is called The Nashville Sound. He’s also a lifelong Braves fan.
Randall Kenan
RANDALL KENAN is the author of A Visitation of Spirits; Let the Dead Bury Their Dead; Walking on Water: Black American Lives at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century; and other works. He is a professor of creative writing at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
John Kessler
JOHN KESSLER was the longtime dining critic at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He writes frequently for Garden & Gun and other publications, and he is working on a book with the Giving Kitchen, Atlanta’s resource for hospitality workers in need. He has also worked as a line cook and a chef.
Matt Lee and Ted Lee
Charleston, South Carolina–bred siblings MATT LEE and TED LEE first channeled their passion for Southern food into The Lee Bros. Boiled Peanuts Catalogue, a mail-order source for Southern pantry staples, and later into writing about food and travel. They have published three award-winning cookbooks and written hundreds of features for magazines and newspapers, and they are the hosts of Southern Uncovered, an exclusively Southern travel show, on the Ovation network.
CJ Lotz
CJ LOTZ is the research editor at Garden & Gun. A native of Eureka, Missouri, and a graduate of Indiana University, she has also worked in Haiti as a stringer for the Associated Press.
Josh MacIvor-Andersen
JOSH MACIVOR-ANDERSEN is the author of On Heights & Hunger and the editor of Rooted: The Best New Arboreal Nonfiction. A onetime Chattanooga resident, he currently lives and writes in Marquette, Michigan.
Guy Martin
Born in Athens, Alabama, and educated in the United States and in Europe, GUY MARTIN lives in Berlin, Prague, and a town in the Deep South. The author of Garden & Gun’s Ask G&G column, Martin has no active Facebook, Twitter, or other social media accounts, except for satiric ones under assumed noms de guerre.
Frances Mayes
FRANCES MAYES’S Under Magnolia is a memoir of growing up in Georgia. She wrote three Italian memoirs, beginning with Under the Tuscan Sun. A novel, Women in Sunlight, will be published in early 2018.
Jon Meacham
JON MEACHAM is the author of Franklin and Winston, American Lion, and Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power, among other books. Born in Chattanooga, he is a distinguished visiting professor at Vanderbilt University and lives with his family in Nashville and Sewanee, Tennessee.
Dave Mezz
DAVE MEZZ is a deputy editor at Garden & Gun and has been with the magazine since 2008. Born in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, he’s a graduate of Carleton College and attended the Missouri School of Journalism. An avid fisherman, he’s known for surgical precision with a fillet knife. He lives in Charleston, South Carolina.
Jonathan Miles
JONATHAN MILES is the books columnist for Garden & Gun and the author of the novels Dear American Airlines; Want Not; and Anatomy of a Miracle: The True Story of a Paralyzed Veteran, a Mississippi Convenience Store, a Vatican Investigation, and the Spectacular Perils of Grace.
Adrian Miller
ADRIAN MILLER is a food writer, former attorney, former politico, and certified barbecue judge who lives in Denver. His first book, Soul Food: The Surprising Story of an American Cuisine, One Plate at a Time, won the 2014 James Beard Foundation Book Award for Reference and Scholarship. His second book, The President’s Kitchen Cabinet: The Story of the African Americans Who Have Fed Our First Families, from the Washingtons to the Obamas, was published on Presidents’ Day 2017.
Jessica Mischner
JESSICA MISCHNER is a writer, editor, and content strategist. From 2009 through 2015, she was a contributing editor and then senior editor for Garden & Gun. In addition to G&G, her work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Domino, Food & Wine, Gourmet, Elle Decor, and Travel + Leisure, among other publications.
T. Edward Nickens
A freelance journalist for nearly thirty years, T. EDWARD NICKENS is a judge for Garden & Gun’s Made in the South Awards and a frequent contributor to the magazine, an editor at large for Field & Stream, and a contributing editor for Audubon. He splits time between Raleigh and Morehead City, North Carolina, with one wife, two dogs, a part-time cat, eleven fly rods, three canoes, two powerboats, and an indeterminate number of duck and goose decoys.
Dacey Orr
DACEY ORR is the assistant online editor and producer at Garden & Gun. An Atlanta native and a graduate of the University of Tennessee, she worked as an editor and producer at Paste magazine and has contributed music and culture stories to the Village Voice, Nashville Scene, and the Bluegrass Situation, among other outlets.
Joe Nick Patoski
JOE NICK PATOSKI authored the book Willie Nelson: An Epic Life and has written about Willie Nelson for more than forty years. A former staff writer for Texas Monthly, he lives in the Texas Hill Country near Wimberley.
Roger Pinckney
ROGER PINCKNEY is a Lowcountry legend, a juke-joint poet, a partisan of pines, a patriot of palmettos, a prince of porpoises. He is the author of thirteen books of fiction and nonfiction and hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles.
Jed Portman
JED PORTMAN is a Charlottesville, Virginia–based writer and former Garden & Gun editor who discovered passions for food and drink at a young age—thanks to the famous fried chicken at the Golden Lamb, his father’s family restaurant in Lebanon, Ohio, and his mother’s strategic reserves of Cheerwine and Stan’s pimento cheese.
Will Price
WILL PRICE is a freelance writer and novice cook born and based in Atlanta. He’s a proud alumnus of Georgia Southern University and takes cast-iron cookware far more seriously than he should.
Kathleen Purvis
KATHLEEN PURVIS has covered food and restaurants for the Charlotte Observer for more than twenty-five years. She’s the author of books on bourbon and pecans in the Savor the South cookbook series, and her third book, on Southern craft distilleries, comes out in spring 2018 from UNC Press.
Hanna Raskin
HANNA RASKIN is the James Beard Award–winning food editor and chief critic at the Post and Courier in Charleston, South Carolina. She started her food writing career in Asheville, North Carolina, a city she profiled for the first issue of Garden & Gun.
Erik Reece
ERIK REECE is the author of six books of nonfiction, including Utopia Drive: A Road Trip Through America’s Most Radical Idea. His book Lost Mountain won Columbia University’s John B. Oakes Award for Distinguished Environmental Journalism. He lives in Nonesuch, Kentucky.
Julia Reed
JULIA REED is a contributing editor for Garden & Gun and writes the magazine’s column the High & the Low. She is the author of six books, including Julia Reed’s South: Spirited Entertaining and High-Style Fun All Year Long; Queen of the Turtle Derby and Other Southern Phenomena; and The House on First Street: My New Orleans Story.
Phillip Rhodes
PHILLIP RHODES is the executive managing editor of Garden & Gun, where he produced and coauthored The Southerner’s Cookbook, a New York Times best seller. Prior to that, he worked at Cooking Light and Men’s Health, where he contributed to the best-selling Abs Diet series of books—despite having no abs to speak of. He was born in Rutherfordton, North Carolina; was raised in Gatlinburg, Tennessee; and now lives with his partner in Charleston, South Carolina.
Steve Russell
STEVE RUSSELL was raised on a family farm in West Tennessee. After working at Maxim and Playboy in New York City, he fled southward again in desperate search of good biscuits. He now resides with his wife, Natalie, and their two children in Charlottesville, Virginia, where he publishes Edible Blue Ridge, a locavore food magazine.
Hampton Sides
HAMPTON SIDES is the author of the bestselling histories Ghost Soldiers, Blood and Thunder, Hellhound on His Trail, and, most recently, In the Kingdom of Ice, which recounts the heroic polar voyage of the U.S.S. Jeannette during the Gilded Age.
John Sledge
JOHN SLEDGE is senior architectural historian with the Mobile Historic Development Commission and a member of the National Book Critics Circle. He is the author of six books on history, architecture, and literary criticism. He and his wife, Lynn, live in Fairhope, Alabama.
Bill Smith
BILL SMITH, the chef at Crook’s Corner in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, is the only James Beard Foundation America’s Classic chef to also have been named a finalist for Best Chef Southeast (twice). The author of the cookbooks Seasoned in the South and Crabs & Oysters, he is currently at work on Seasoned in the South, Volume II.
David Thier
DAVE THIER is a freelance writer covering food, music, video games, and everything in between. Originally from Massachusetts, he has lived in New Orleans, Savannah, and Nashville, and currently resides in Philadelphia.
Jeff Vrabel
JEFF VRABEL’S work has appeared in GQ, Men’s Health, the Washington Post, and Success, among other publications. A former and hopefully future resident of Hilton Head Island, he now lives in Indianapolis with his wife and two sons.
Daniel Wallace
DANIEL WALLACE is the author of Big Fish as well as five other novels, including his most recent, Extraordinary Adventures. He directs the Creative Writing Program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Robb Walsh
Three-time James Beard Award winner ROBB WALSH is the author of The Chili Cookbook, Texas Eats, and The Tex-Mex Cookbook. He is a partner in El Real Tex-Mex Cafe in Houston’s Montrose neighborhood and a cofounder of Foodways Texas, a nonprofit dedicated to preserving Texas food history headquartered at the University of Texas at Austin.
Logan Ward
LOGAN WARD is the author of See You in a Hundred Years, the true story of his family’s immersion into 1900-era farm life in the Shenandoah Valley. He lives in Virginia with his wife and two children.
Holly Williams
HOLLY WILLIAMS is a critically acclaimed singer-songwriter and a successful Nashville entrepreneur. She owns the popular retail spots White’s Mercantile, a general store for the modern-day tastemaker, and H. Audrey, a finely curated women’s clothing boutique. She is also a mama to three little ones.