Hybrid Event: Ed Southern presents Fight Songs, in conversation with Scott Bunn & Tom Chalmers

Image text: Ed Southern in conversation with Scott Bunn and Tom Chalmers. Wednesday, October 6 at 7 PM ET. Also shown: Asheville FM 103.3 logo, photo of author Ed Southern, and front cover of his book Fight Songs

This is a hybrid event. There is the opportunity to attend in-store or listen to a live radio broadcast. Like most of our events, this event is free but registration is required for the in-store attendance option

Click here to register for the in-store event, OR tune in to 103.3 Asheville FM for the live radio broadcast on Scott Bunn and Tom Chalmers's show.

This event is co-sponsored by community radio station Asheville FM. Vist their website to learn more, listen, and support the station.

If you decide to purchase the author's book(s), we ask that you purchase from Malaprop's. When you do this you make it possible for us to continue hosting author events and you keep more dollars in our community. You may also support our work by purchasing a gift card or making a donation of any amount below. Thank you!


Ed Southern, a lifelong fan of the Wake Forest University Demon Deacons, the smallest school in the NCAA's Power 5, set out to tell the story of how he got tangled, in vines of history and happenstance, with the two giants of his favorite sport: the Crimson Tide and the Clemson Tigers. He set out to tell how a North Carolina native crossed the shifty, unmarked border between Tobacco Road and the Deep South. He set out to tell how the legendary Paul "Bear" Bryant, from beyond the grave, introduced him to his wife, a Birmingham native and die-hard Alabama fan.

While he was writing that story, though, 2020 came along.

Suddenly his questions had a new and urgent focus: Why do sports mean so much that so many will play and watch them in the face of a global pandemic? How have the South's histories shaped its fervor for college sports? How have college sports shaped how southerners construct their identities, priorities, and allegiances? Why is North Carolina passionate about college basketball when its neighbors to the South live and die by college football? Does this have anything to do with North Carolina's reputation as the most "progressive" southern state, a state many in the Deep South don't think is "really" southern? If college sports really do mean so much in the South, then why didn't everyone down south wear masks or recognize that Black Lives Matter, even after the coaches told us to?

Fight Songs explores the connections and contradictions between the teams we root for and the places we plant our roots; between the virtues that sports are supposed to teach and the cutthroat business they've become; between the hopes of fans and the demands of the past, present, and future.

Ed Southern is the author of The Jamestown Adventure, Voices of the American Revolution in the Carolinas, and the short-story collection Parlous Angels. His work has appeared in South Writ Large, the Asheville Poetry Review, storySouth, the NC 10x10 Play Festival, and elsewhere. Since 2008, he has been the executive director of the North Carolina Writers' Network. He lives in Winston-Salem.

Event address: 
Hybrid event: both in-person and virtual attendance option
Books: 
Fight Songs: A Story of Love and Sports in a Complicated South By Ed Southern Cover Image
$25.95
ISBN: 9781949467697
Availability: Not Currently On Our Shelves. Usually Ships in 1-5 Days.
Published: Blair - September 7th, 2021

$0.00
SKU: x672389
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