2026 Laurie Byington Lecture on the Contemporary South

“Whose Stories Get Told? Southern Studies, Activism, and the Work of Reconciliation”

Thursday, February 26 • 6 p.m.,
Presidents Dining Room | University Center | Macon campus
Free and open to the public

Reece’s lecture will examine who gets to tell their stories and how the act of telling can be a form of protest.

“When we established the Byington Lecture on the Contemporary South, we had in mind a speaker like Chuck Reece,” said Dr. Doug Thompson, professor of history and director of the Spencer B. King Jr. Center. “He has created spaces for southerners to express how they see themselves and their relationship to their places.”

Reece is the editor-in-chief of Salvation South, a weekly digital magazine that presents the work of Southern storytellers — essayists, journalists, fiction writers, poets, photographers, and filmmakers. Salvation South focuses on the work of storytellers who address the American South in all its rich diversity — or tear down the myths of a monolithic, white region. Salvation South’s contributors range from bestselling authors to Oscar-nominated filmmakers to poets laureate and young writers starting out.

Founding editor-in-chief of The Bitter Southerner publication, Reece won the Southern Foodways Alliance’s John Egerton Prize, which “recognizes artists, writers, scholars, and others — including artisans and farmers and cooks — whose work, in the American South, addresses issues of race, class, gender, and social and environmental justice, through the lens of food.”

“In The Bitter Southerner, Reece highlighted the often-neglected voices in the stories of the American South,” said Dr. Thompson. “In Salvation South, he has sought to highlight the multiple souths that exist and celebrate that broad diversity, which sometimes masks itself in binaries.”

In 2021, Reece won a regional Edward R. Murrow Award for Best Podcast/Large Market for his work on “The Bitter Southerner” podcast, which he wrote and hosted for two seasons. That same year, Reece and his wife, Stacy, launched Salvation South. Chuck has since returned to radio and podcasting with his Salvation South Podcast. The podcast features Reece’s weekly Morning Edition and All Things Considered commentaries for Georgia Public Broadcasting’s National Public Radio affiliates, and monthly audio magazine stories or in-depth interviews under the title “Salvation South Deluxe.”

The Laurie Byington Lecture Series promotes an examination of the contemporary American South. Madge T. Byington established the series to honor her daughter, a 1992 graduate of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and former member of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Alumni Board of Directors, and to assist the University in bringing a distinguished expert, or recognized leader in his or her field or discipline, to the Macon campus to give an annual lecture. The lectures and other activities of the Center are supported by funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities.