It took a “leap of faith,” Bobbi Buchanan says, to leave her job as a corporate writer after 16 years to found the quarterly e-zine New Southerner (newsoutherner.com) in the summer of 2005. But with 3,000 readers after just 19 issues, she’s never looked back on the decision to “do something you feel like you have a calling to do.”
Her calling was for a unique publication grounded in the South’s diverse and long traditions. “I wanted to create an identity for the South that doesn’t exist in the literary world and to promote the idea of us having concerns and values that resonate everywhere,” she says — values like self-sufficiency, environmental stewardship and support for local economies. Regular departments include “Fuss,” which spotlights the hottest sustainability issues, and “Dog-Eared,” offering poetry and prose as well as interviews with Southern writers. “Long-term we’d like to branch out,” she says, “perhaps do some things with the schools. It’s so important to engage the next generation.”
