Nobody’s Home: Modern Southern Folklore is an online anthology of creative nonfiction works about beliefs, myths, and narratives in Southern culture over the last fifty years, in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

Created in 2020, the anthology collects personal essays, memoirs, short articles, opinion pieces, and contemplative works about the ideas, experiences, and assumptions that have shaped life below the old Mason-Dixon Line since 1970. This year’s Open Submissions Period for creative nonfiction begins on April 15, 2024. Accepted submissions from last year’s reading periods were published in August and November 2023. Access to Nobody’s Home is and will continue to be free, and while the project is intended for a general readership, it also has accompanying resources for teachers to use the works in their classrooms. 

Nobody’s Home had four reading periods for submissions during 2020 and 2021, and accepted works were then published in January, March, June, and September 2021. After the initial compilation of the anthology was complete, Foster’s attention shifted to promoting the works and to publishing the lesson plans that accompany each work. For writers and scholars who are still interested in contributing, submissions of reviews and interviews will be considered year-round. 

Nobody’s Home was created with the support of a Literary Arts Fellowship from the Alabama State Council on the Arts. The fellowship “recognizes artistic excellence as well as professional commitment and maturity. It is intended to contribute to the further development of the literary artist and the advancement of his or her professional career.”

To learn more about the project, you can read the works that have been published, read posts in the editor’s blog Groundwork, like the project’s Facebook page, or follow on Twitter.

a sampling of posts from Groundwork, the editor’s blog:

January 25, 2024: Hold Steady and Stick Together: A Rumination School-Choice Vouchers
November 6, 2023: The Waterboy at 25
October 12, 2023: A Road Trip, West: Alabama’s Black Belt
October 3, 2023: Car Trouble and Voodoo: A Rumination on Horror and the South
July 11, 2023: Flipping the Script: A Rumination on the Anti-CRT Movement
April 11, 2023: A Road Trip, Southwest: The Carolinas in Spring, Part Two
April 6, 2023: A Road Trip, Northeast: The Carolinas in Spring, Part One
December 29, 2022: A Road Trip, Eastbound: Highway 80
April 5, 2022: A Road Trip, Northeast: Clayton, Georgia
December 16, 2021: A Road Trip, Southbound: Highway 31
November 30, 2021: A Road Trip, Northwest: Highway 82
September 30, 2021: The Outro: There was never one South.
August 24, 2021: A Road Trip, Southbound: Highway 331
August 5, 2021: People are gon’ do what they’re gon’ do: A Rumination on COVID in the South
June 22, 2021: Myths and Facts: LGBTQ in the South
April 10, 2021: More Substance than Stereotype: A Rumination on Southerners and Guns
December 8, 2020: The Looming Specter of the Dormant Voter: A Rumination
November 12, 2020: Work: A Rumination
November 3, 2020: Reagan at Neshoba, August 1980
October 13, 2020: Crazy, Wrong Madness
September 29, 2020: A Personal Religion that Goes Public
September 17, 2020: Narratives, Old and New