"In We Might As Well Eat, Terry Barr’s second book of prose non-fiction, he is so effective and engaging with his use of the familiar essay that readers will find themselves wanting to join in with the other side of the conversation. However, this volume is more than just inviting. It is also filled with hard-earned courageous truths and a self-awareness far more keen than one ordinarily encounters." –Tim Peeler author of Checking Out and Wild in the Strike Zone

We Might As Well Eat

Biographies & Memoirs

Barr, Terry

Community & Culture

Third Lung Press

Following in the tradition of Alabama memoirist Rick Bragg, Don’t Date Baptists explores the world of Bessemer, Alabama, circa 1960's-70's from the eyes of a boy who grew up there, struggling to understand the divide of race, class, religion, and neighborhood anxiety. Essayist Terry Barr learns from his parents that not all love is the same; that certain neighbors are not to be trusted; that crosses and stars and popular music can with seamless metamorphosis signal danger, desire, hate, and deep abiding love. While public pools might be filled with clay to prevent integrated swimming, or so-called friends might slur those darker than themselves, this southern boy learns to appreciate how these incidents and relationships have challenged and molded him into the teacher, writer and unapologetic Bessemer man that he is.With humor and poignant authenticity, Barr captures what it means to come of age as the New South cuts its teeth, with much trial and terrible error, in territory that is rich and explosive, devastating and beautiful.

Don't Date Baptists: and Other Warnings From My Alabama Mother

Red Dirt Press

Second Edition with NEW EXTRA CONTENT! Following in the tradition of Alabama memoirist Rick Bragg, Don’t Date Baptists explores the world of Bessemer, Alabama, circa 1960’s–70’s from the eyes of a boy who grew up there, struggling to understand the divide of race, class, religion, and neighborhood anxiety. Essayist Terry Barr learns from his parents that not all love is the same; that certain neighbors are not to be trusted; that crosses and stars and popular music can with seamless metamorphosis signal danger, desire, hate, and deep abiding love. While public pools might be filled with clay to prevent integrated swimming, or so-called friends might slur those darker than themselves, this southern boy learns to appreciate how these incidents and relationships have challenged and molded him into the teacher, writer and unapologetic Bessemer man that he is. With humor and poignant authenticity, Barr captures what it means to come of age as the New South cuts its teeth, with much trial and terrible error, in territory that is rich and explosive, devastating and beautiful. Praise for “Don’t Date Baptists and Other Warnings From My Alabama Mother:” "Within this collection, we see Barr working to make sense of what the Drive-By Truckers labeled 'the duality of the Southern Thing. '" --Dr. Molly McGehee, Professor of Southern Studies, Emory at Oxford College. “Terry Barr’s stories of growing up in a small Alabama town are gemstones illuminating the conflicting loves and loyalties of family, race, class, and religion as lived out in the pre-Civil Rights era (1950 – 1970’s roughly). Barr’s explorations are heartfelt and humble, filled with questions that aren’t easy to answer but well worth thinking about long after this book is put down. A few of the stand-out essays are ‘Neither the Season, Nor the Time,’ ‘Searching for Higher Ground,’ and ‘In It’s Infancy,’ but Barr’s insight and life-earned wisdom flow through the entire book. --Adrienne Ross Scanlan, Nonfiction Editor, Blue Lyra Review, and author of Turning Homeward – Restoring Hope and Nature in the Urban Wild “TERRY TELLS STORIES that are uniquely his and at the same time collectively ours. His cast of characters will have you nodding your head and saying, ‘Yes…I know those people, too!’ He peels back his life with mature, discerning, perceptive eyes and invites us into his growing up and home town experience. He’s a story teller who isn’t afraid to share his doubts, joys, anger, sorrows, and soul.” —Wanda Meade, writer/photographer “IN TERRY BARR’S essays we hear an authentic Southern voice rooted in a particular time and place: Bessemer, AL, beginning in the 1950’s. He brings to bear a historian’s delight in concrete details combined with a probing sensitivity to the psychological tensions and complexities beneath the surface of characters and events.” —Steve Beauchamp, Poet “TERRY BARR’S BEAUTIFUL, straight from the heart writings remind us of memory’s healing power; they are evocative of places I know very well but have never been, of people with whom I’m intimately familiar but have never met. These are remarkable personal essays—funny, wistful in the right measure, smart, and heartbreaking.” —Leslie T. White, Professor of English, University of New Orleans

Don't Date Baptists and Other Warnings from My Alabama Mother

Arts & Literature

Eight poignant, romantic and quirky holiday stories to enjoy for the holiday, including, The Three Gifts of Christmas by Nell Duvall, A Miracle for Christmas by Charmaine Pauls, Deck the Stalls by Shannon Kennedy, Merry Christmas, India Stone by Megan Hussey and Linda White-Francis, The Feast of Yule by Leslie D. Soule, An American Noel by Marianna Boncek, Secret Santa by Terry Barr, Merry Christmas, Henry by Aubrey Wynne

Holiday Hopes

Literature & Fiction

Pauls, Charmaine

Wynne, Aubrey

Boncek Marianna

Kennedy, Shannon

Hussey, Megan

DuVall, Nell

White-Francis, Linda

D. Soule, Leslie

Contemporary

Melange Books

Southern Memoir focused on food and sports written by the author of Don't Date Baptists and Other Warnings From My Alabam Mother

We Might As Well Eat: How to Survive Tornadoes, Alabama Football, and Your Southern Family

Redhawk Publications

Secrets I’m Dying to Tell You explores author Terry Barr’s life in Bessemer, Alabama, a suburb of Birmingham. The related essays reveal secrets about Bessemer, his family, and some of his most intimate friends and acquaintances, many of whom were victims of abuse. Beginning with his mother’s #MeToo stories, which were the impetus for this CNF collection, Barr began reconsidering the other stories he had heard or read about Bessemer’s dark past—its embrace of the Ku Klux Klan, and its ongoing debilitating relation to Race. He also considered his own family background: the disloyalty he felt toward some family members because of their recklessness, their selfishness, their way of putting their own desires before the safety and well-being of those they should have been caring for. Finally, the secrets he ends with focus on the last part of his mother’s life and how he tried to reconcile himself to loving and accepting her world, which he discovered was a world that he could still learn from, despite the belief that he was far more progressive than she ever was. Secrets can harm us, and though their revelation hurts, the only way we can heal is through such revelation and admission of our own part in the secret past.“As I have noted before, Terry Barr is the absolute master of the familiar essay. I did not think it possible, but in this, his third collection, he travels further and deeper into his own and his hometown community’s past. Barr is fearless, empathetic, and his relentless interrogation of memory and history results in discoveries that are both joyful and heartbreaking.”—Tim Peeler Author of West of Mercy and The Birdhouse.“In his new collection of essays, Terry Barr examines the ways in which privilege, memory, and pain embed themselves in our cities, our homes, our very bodies. The sense of humor that has earned Barr comparisons to Rick Bragg is still here, but filtered through a more serious lens. ‘That was me, the quiet listener,’ Barr writes, and as we read Secrets I’m Dying to Tell You, we’re listening too, ears and hearts open as we reckon not only with the past, but with our responsibility to a shared future.”—Joni Tevis, author of The World Is On Fire.

Secrets I'm Dying to Tell You

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Books by Barr, Terry