Take a moment today away from Doomscrolling and engage with a poem by Robert Hayden. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

I've said it elsewhere, but if you're a young organization in the South that meets the eligibility criteria for the new literary fund (budget over $50k) but has not yet gained 501(c)(3) status, @hubcitypress.bsky.social might be able to serve as your fiscal sponsor. www.mellon.org/news/coaliti...

“If southern history is at once postscript and prelude, and always an archive of good, bad, and ugly, then I suppose I teach—like us all—in the midst of the past's still-unfolding story and vista.” muse.jhu.edu/pub/285/arti...

Vaccine Skepticism has gone too far. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/27/s...

For a Student Who Used AI to Write a Paper

“The worst-case scenario would be us having to retrench a little, close some of the outlying clinics, but I hope it doesn’t come to that,” said John Fairman, the center’s chief executive. “We are the safety net here.” www.nytimes.com/2025/10/22/h...

“Ayers’ true legacy lies in what it reveals about power. From the beginning, plaintiffs insisted that equity required more than dollars, that without a voice in governance and autonomy over programs, any remedy would fall short. They were right.”

“Working nights also presents its unique challenges—exhaustion, rowdy and drunk people, rude customers, long hours (and, of course, strange photographers)—yet they all have done it for years. And some wouldn’t have it any other way.”

I remember being at the Starbucks in Chevy Chase DC—Connecticut and Livingston—with my daughter when she heard a voice. “Is that Susan Stamberg I just heard?” She asked. She knew the voice, but not the face. Rest well. www.npr.org/sections/the...

White people’s insistence that other white people—especially the ones exhibiting morally questionable behavior—deserve the benefit of the doubt is going to kill us all.

As this story notes, Greenville’s poverty rate is 32 percent. As the town has lost population, the city has been in decline. And while the violence is staggering , so is the poverty. And there is often a correlation between poverty and violence. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/15/u...

On January 24, 2025, Switchyard gathered dozens of writers, radio producers, nonprofit leaders, educators, and thinkers at their headquarters in Tulsa to collectively imagine—and reckon with—what the next four years will be like. Proud to hve been a part of it. www.switchyardmag.com/issue-5/demo...

My first event for "When It's Darkness on the Delta" will be on January 13, 2026, at Square Books in Oxford Mississippi. I'll be in conversation with Wright Thompson, author of "The Barn." Mark your calendars now.squarebooks.com/event/2026-01-…

I’ve refreshed the look of my website, making it much cleaner and easier to navigate. This is what can be accomplished when there is a professional doing the work (I did the old version). www.wralpheubanks.com

“So many restaurants are catering to the new D.C.; Georgia Brown’s spoke to the old D.C. — Chocolate City,” said the cultural scholar W. Ralph Eubanks, using the nickname that the funk musician George Clinton bestowed on Washington in 1975. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/07/d...

“I think it’s quite a feat if you can write a story that gives humanity to all the people you put on the page.” Rattlebone was quite a feat, and Maxine Clair left a book in the world that readers will never forget. mcnallyeditions.substack.com/p/rememberin...

It’s COVER REVEAL Friday in the house for @wralpheubanks.bsky.social! WHEN IT’S DARKNESS ON THE DELTA unearths the Mississippi Delta’s buried history, revealing a microcosm of economic oppression in the US and the seeds of transformation. Watch this space in January 2026! Cover design: Louis Roe

A $35 Chicken Dinner in Mississippi? How New York Prices Went National. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/18/d...

“So much of White America has a one-dimensional idea of blackness . And she was trying to capture it in all its complexity.” www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2...

I was saddened to hear today of the death of the writer Maxine Clair. Her novel in stories “Rattlebone” is one that deserves to be brought out of the shadows and into the spotlight . thesewaneereview.com/articles/man...

Feed: "South Side Weekly" By: Delaney Eubanks on Wednesday, September 17, 2025

America can learn from the Germans. Hire alles ist nicht klargekommen.

“Music, and specifically the blues, was an integral part of Maxwell Street. In order to be heard over all the market din, electric guitars would be plugged in outside storefronts.” Yes, Chicago is Mississippi north. southsideweekly.com/the-lost-nei...

these are segregationists

The Authors Guild has partnered with James Patterson for his inaugural “Go Finish Your Book” grant, which awards up to $50,000 each to authors completing their works in progress. Learn more: https://bit.ly/4mcZFac

“As part of the orientation, Residents are given copies of W. Ralph Eubanks’ book, A Place Like Mississippi: A Journey Through a Real and Imagined Literary Landscape.” www.ama-assn.org/medical-resi...

If I have any credibility with you from 20 years of reporting on rightwing & fascist movements, please listen when I beg you not to celebrate Charlie Kirk getting shot. Leave aside morality: this isn’t a match in dry grass, it’s a torch. We do not want what this could ignite & we would not win.

“There are so many stories across this state that are buried or truly hiding in plain sight. People who want to tell those stories might not yet have found the right path to tell them. This residency could be life-changing for them and for us all.” mississippitoday.org/2025/09/09/g...

At this year's Mississippi Book Festival, I will be part of the Monument Lab Bulletin panel. We'll be discussing the current issue of the Bulletin, titled Reverence, which honors the 70th anniversary of the lynching of Emmett Till. www.wralpheubanks.com/new-events/2...

“The prospect that one day the university would commemorate such a brave act of radical activism, much less speak about it openly, seemed impossible,” Eubanks said. “Today, we are officially breaking the silence about the Fulton Chapel Black Power protest.” thedmonline.com/plaque-place...

“Seventy-five titles by or about Wittgenstein so far,” he said, referring to the Austrian philosopher….”And most of them are annotated, meaning Cormac read them closely. A lot of Hegel. That was his light evening reading, apparently.” www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture...

“When It’s Darkness on the Delta” is now available for preorder.

“Mississippi’s law, by contrast [with UKLaw], would block everyone from accessing the site—teens and adults—unless they hand over sensitive information, and once they do, the law in Mississippi requires Bluesky to keep track of which users are children.” mississippitoday.org/2025/08/25/b...

On September 2, 2025, the Mississippi Freedom Trail Marker commemorating the 1970 Fulton Chapel Protest will be dedicated. If you are around Oxford, Mississippi then, please consider attending.

A federal court ruled that ANTHROPIC illegally copied MILLIONS of books to train its AI. All authors and publishers whose books were downloaded by Anthropic from pirate websites are subject to receiving compensation. This could involve your work. For more info: authorsguild.org/news/anthrop...

As Jonathan Lemire noted yesterday in The Atlantic, in the week before the meeting, leaders in Ukraine and Europe worried that Trump would agree to Putin’s demand(s)…. The summit appears to have produced nothing but a favorable photo op for Putin.

When I was writing my chapter on the river towns of Natchez and Vicksburg, Greg Iles was so generous with his time snd provided incredible insights into his hometown of Natchez. He will be missed. mississippitoday.org/2025/08/15/a...

“Being white these days isn’t what it used to be.” From Jim Crow’s last gasp to Black Lives Matter, white Southerners have had a lot to process about what their racial status means in a changing South.

If DC voted Republican, we would make them the 51st state just to pick up the senators.

DC does not match the dystopian picture depicted by the White House— including “bloodthirsty criminals” and “roving mobs of wild youth” — and this picture stands in sharp contrast to official crime statistics.

One of the grants was to a professor writing a book on the reemergence of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1970s and 1980s. On a spreadsheet entitled “Copy of NEH Active Grants,” the government flagged the work as being connected to diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. apnews.com/article/doge...

“Speaking after the hearing, Eubanks said his experience teaching college students who use tools such as ChatGPT makes him worry that AI will erode not only the market for books but the craft of writing.”

I’m on my way to #RAGBRAI, so I didn’t get to open the box of advanced reader copies of “When It’s Darkness on the Delta,” coming in January 2026 from @beaconpress.bsky.social . A photo from home will have to do.

Bennie Brown is training up a new generation of farmers in the Mississippi Delta by reviving a 1870s concept established by the Swan Lake Association.

"Now may be the time to take what has been lost in the translations of the blues and recover its real value as instruction on how to survive, thrive, and move forward." hedgehogreview.com/issues/lesso...

Rather than admit a mistake, the Trump administration is trying to build a criminal case against Kilmar Abrego Garcia by cutting deals with felons, driving out federal prosecutors, and threatening to deport him again, @NickMiroff writes.

“We’re all living in Mississippi now,” said Eubanks. “Everybody in this county has at least one foot in Mississippi whether they want to admit it or not.” mississippitoday.org/2025/06/27/d...

So wonderful to talk history, storytelling, and the legacy of Medgar Evers with @joyannreid.bsky.social and Ebony Lumumba (we missed you, Eddie Glaude).

Great conversation about the stories we tell - and don't tell - with @wralpheubanks.bsky.social, @joyannreid.bsky.social, and Dr. Ebony Lumumba. Thank you, Joy, for the shout-out to Reconstruction!

"Everyone in this country has at least one foot in Mississippi, whether they know it or not." - @wralpheubanks.bsky.social on current events