Description

Worthy of being yelled from the roof tops or disclosed among friends, the texts from the 2025 Reader Hush & Holler are percussive and speak to impact in the South and the Caribbean. Essays consider the onomatopoetic themes KNOCK KNOCK, CRUSH, and TWANG as a means to echo a year of resistance and resilience in art and culture. The places addressed and ideas troubled defy expectations because the stories worth telling are never quite what they seem.

Within this volume, writers recollect and investigate: a student-juried art collection from Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem; familial Black archives and the care of preserving these visual testimonies in the region; what it means to listen to Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter againsts a changing landscape in New Orleans; the impact of Georgia-born artist Benny Andrews teaching in the prison system; a study of Sawgrass Cowboys in the Everglades; the parallel and intersecting relationships of Texan artists Max Neuhaus and Sarah Oppenheimer’s architectural sculptures; a special full color artist project by Cydne Jasmin Coleby,

Existing between the space occupied by periodicals, academic journals, and art objects, Hush & Holler covers thirteen states plus the Caribbean, and is carried by public and private universities, large-scale institutions, DIY spaces, private collectors, and a thoughtful, curious cultural audience.