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Acknowledgments I owe thanks to many people who have helped in my creating the works and bringing them to life that make up Alabama Afternoons, from direct editorial input, to the dialogue among friends, colleagues, and family: At the Press-Register in Mobile, where most of the pieces originally appeared : editors Mike Marshall, Dewey English, Paul Cloos, K. A. Turner, Jackie Byrd, Debbie Lord, Steve Joynt, Jim Van Anglen, and Dave Helms; photographers Bill Starling, Mike Kittrell, Glenn Andrews, Mary Hattler, John David Mercer, Kate Mercer, and Victor Calhoun; colleagues Doug Dimitry, Chris Hall, Debby Stearns, Frances Coleman, J. D. Crowe, Tom Harrison, Judi Rojeski , Sherry Lee, George Talbot, Rena Havner, and Ben Raines; and a special thanks to Howard and Dorsey Bronson, and to Ricky Mathews. For the pieces that originally appeared in other publications: Connie Rosenblum and Dana Jennings of the New York Times; Arnold Berke, of Preservation ; and the editorial staff of Garden & Gun. At The University of Alabama Press: Dan Waterman, who has been key to envisioning the individual profiles and essays as a collective whole, and shepherding the book into publication. In the Alabama writing community: Don Noble, Rick Bragg, the Clarence Cason Award selection committee, and the late Bailey Thomson at The University of Alabama; Jeannie Thompson at the Alabama Writers Forum; Jake Reiss of Alabama Booksmith in Birmingham and Karin and Kiefer Wilson of Page & Palette in Fairhope; Sue Walker at the University of South Alabama. My writing and reading friends around the country: John Sledge, Karl Hein, Charles Salzberg, Al Kassan, David Alsobrook, Walter Edgar, John Hafner, Eli Evans, Bill Pangburn and Renee Magnanti, William and Nancy Oppenheimer , the Mosteller family, David Weiner, Lynn and Cori Yonge, Russell 254 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS and Billie Goodloe, Gordon and Geri Moulton, Judy Culbreth, Karen Zacharias , Alida Becker, Joelle Delbourgo; Spalding Brief-Residency MFA in Writing Program colleagues, among others, Karen Mann, Kathleen Driskell, Katy Yocom, Luke Wallin, Dianne Aprile, Rich Goodman, Ellie Bryant, Mary Waters , Bob Finch, Molly Peacock, Julie Brickman, Charles Gaines, Elaine Orr, and Phil Deaver; and folks I’ve profiled here who have become friends, Sena Jeter Naslund, Diane McWhorter, Winston Groom, Howell Raines, and Frye Gaillard. My family, for their love and support for all my writing: my mom and dad, my sister Sherrell and her husband, Charlie, all of them gone now, but who read with depth and care so many of these pieces early on; my sisters Becky and Robbie and brother-in-law John Nadas; my nieces and nephews Lezlee Peterzell-Bellanich, and Rob Bellanich, Marisa Nadas, Scott and Amy Peterzell , Sandro Nadas, Aaron Grean. My wife, Nancy, for patiently hearing about everything I write—or sometimes don’t—from first inception to my feelings about it once it’s on the page, and always being there for the sojourn. And our daughter Meredith, a keen-eyed reader and critic, and a writer whose own voice is beginning to flourish beautifully on the page. ...

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