A Conversation Between Jamie Rogers Southern and Ed Southern

North Carolina literary power couple Jamie Rogers Southern (executive director, Bookmarks) and Ed Southern (executive director, NC Writers’ Network) sit down in their home to discuss building a statewide readership and supporting writers through the decades, anniversary milestones, what keeps them going, and what’s next.

Ed Southern: Hello, Jamie.

Jamie Rogers Southern: Hello, Ed.

ES: Would you like to identify yourself for the interview?

JRS: I'm Jamie Southern.

ES: What is your job title?

JRS: Executive Director of Bookmarks. What about you?

ES: My name is Ed Southern. I am the Executive Director of the North Carolina Writers’ Network. Bookmarks is celebrating a milestone this year, aren't they?

JRS: We are. 20 years of our annual book festival coming up in a few days.

ES: Which is how Bookmarks began, correct? Just as the annual festival?

JRS: Correct.

ES: But now…

JRS: But now, so much more: a bookstore, the only non-profit model, independent bookstore in the state, one of the only ones in the country; year-round programming, events, outreach. A lot going on: authors in schools, authors in the store, authors in the community.

[JRS and ES together]: Authors everywhere. (Laughing)

ES: Lying all over the place. Can't get away from them.

JRS: What about your anniversary?

ES: The North Carolina Writers’ Network is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year. The Network was founded in 1985 and has been going strong since.

JRS: I feel like there's a joke there to insert about you being twice as old as Bookmarks.

ES: (laughing) It’s not me. I was a small child when the Writers’ Network was founded. And I just want to brag on you and Bookmarks a bit. Bookmarks Festival is the largest annual book festival in the Carolinas, isn't it?

JRS: Yes, Bookmarks is the largest annual book festival in the Carolinas. We bring 20,000 people to the festival from about 30 states now, usually about 60 percent of the North Carolina counties. Authors from all over the country and all over the world. We’ve got an author coming from New Zealand this year. 52 authors this year, plus three keynote authors. It’s gonna be great.

ES: It is. I will be there as an author this time. As well as a fan. As well as a reader. So I'm looking forward to that.

JRS: Your new book is cool.

ES: Thank you. It's an anthology I edited, The Devil's Done Come Back: New Ghost Tales from North Carolina. It’s always fun during [Bookmarks] festival weekend because people will ask me, How's Jamie doing? And I'll say, Your guess is as good as mine. I see a Jamie-shaped blur go by every now and then. That's about all the interaction that we have until after the festival's done. So my big question for you is, why the hell do we do this? We both run literary non-profits.

JRS: Clearly to make a lot of money.

ES: Obviously. (Jamie laughs.) That’s the goal: the jet-setting lifestyle.

JRS: I guess…I didn’t know that this was a career possibility. I've been really fortunate enough to have those possibilities open up to me like this role at Bookmarks, which I kind of created 13 years ago, when our organization had just moved from a volunteer-run organization to having any staff. I think the goal of doing it is to see what it could become…what we could make for the community around books and around stories. That's why I still do it.

ES: You had decided to go into the book business long before you moved to Winston-Salem, long before you got involved with Bookmarks. You had worked as a bookseller, you'd managed an independent bookstore, you'd worked for the American Booksellers Association. What was it that drew you to to the book business in the first place?

JRS: I thought in high school that books were cool, which I still do, as they are. But I also needed a job when I was in high school. I liked to read. This seemed like a good fit. In college, I needed a job. I worked in an independent bookstore. And then after I graduated college, I had been exposed to all the possibilities that could be in the book industry. I knew I didn't want to write books, I wanted to read them. So what was my avenue to do that? There are a lot of possibilities for people who are interested in the industry. More so now, obviously, than there were 20 years ago. But back then, I just wanted to be surrounded by books and live a life that's full of curiosity and learning and the joy that comes with that.

ES: Nerd.

JRS: I know. (Laughing.) What about you? Why do you do it?

ES: I got into the book business after I dropped out of graduate school. I thought I wanted to be a professor. And then I learned more about the reality of academic life and realized that it just wasn't for me, that I wasn't going to be happy doing that. So I was looking for a job in a newspaper. This was a long time ago…I just aged myself. (Laughing) In the meantime, I needed something, some kind of paycheck and remembered how much I loved going into good bookstores. A new bookstore had opened in the town where I was living, and I put in an application, got a job, and kind of like you, I discovered there's this whole industry with lots of different roles that people can play. That job led to a job in publishing. And then that job in publishing led to my job with the Writers’ Network. As far as why I keep doing it (pauses)…We're living in a moment in which—not to sound too grandiose—but those ideas of curiosity and openness and free expression are under assault. And so I'm damn sure not going to step away now. Even before such times, there was the possibility of connection. It may seem paradoxical that reading and to a great extent writing are such solitary activities, and yet both of them can only be accomplished in community. They are such powerful ways of creating community . . .

JRS: Right.

ES: . . . these exquisitely solitary pursuits. It's a contradiction I think we're both very comfortable with.

JRS: Well, I think it's funny that you, as a writer yourself and wanting to be a writer, have surrounded your work in the industry working with writers. As a publisher, as the executive director of the Writers’ Network. Like, how funny that you went that path, but I've never wanted to be a writer. (Laughs) I want to be a reader. And so I have gone the opposite direction in the industry of getting books into the hands of readers and putting authors and books in front of people. I think even though it is a solitary action, writing or reading, they do need each other. I don't think one is complete without the other.

ES: It’s funny because a couple years ago someone that we both know who works with a lot of non-profits and is familiar with both of our non-profits said something to me about the budget for Bookmarks being so much bigger than the budget for the North Carolina Writers’ Network. And my response was essentially, Thank God. Because Bookmarks is an organization devoted to creating readers and getting people fired up about reading. So, as writers, we need your organization to be a lot bigger than ours. As writers, we're rooting hard for you.

JRS: (Laughing) That’s good to hear.

ES:  What were your expectations when you started working in the book business?

JRS: It’s a calling that I really felt. I had other jobs in college, but working at The Booksmith (note: the Alabama Booksmith in Homewood, AL) was something that really stirred me, I think, and made me alive to all the possibilities of what I could do. I expected it to be a job. I didn't expect it to grow into a passion. Not just to be surrounded by books, but then to get to talk to people about those books, to share in the joy and the love and even the hate of certain books. Nothing made me happier, or still makes me happier than when somebody passionately disagrees with me about a book that I've read. Except when it's you. (She looks at Ed.) That makes me mad. (Laughing.) How many connections and relationships I've built through the years through just that, just helping people get to know books and authors. A greatly different viewpoint now, 20 years in, than when I started just thinking, Oh, this is a good job for college.

ES:  I think in terms of when I started writing seriously, my expectations, in hindsight, were embarrassing.

JRS: What was embarrassing about your expectations?

ES: It was a far different literary landscape, a far different literary economy than what we have now. I won't say most, but many writers are equally naive about it. But I certainly was very naive about where the writing life might lead. Obviously it hasn't gone there, but I really love where it has taken me. I really value the people that I've gotten to know in the book business, in the writing life.

JRS: I think the real joy is certainly the people, but I can't imagine my life without having encountered all the books that I have and how much that has changed me as a reader, as a thinker, as a person.

ES: They’ve been the basis of a community that we both cherish a great deal.

JRS: 40 years. What do you look at for the next 40 for the future of the Network and of the industry?

ES: You know, I think as far as the Writers’ Network goes, we will keep doing pretty much the same thing, but who knows the ways in which we'll do them in the years to come? We'll still be bringing writers together, helping them make connections, providing education in the craft and business of writing. But the way in which we'll do that? I feel like it would be foolish to try to predict how that will look five years from now, much less 40 years from now.

JRS: I think a lot of the same. You know, our [Bookmarks] mission, I don't see that changing anytime soon. Building a curious, connected, and inclusive community through books is something that I hope always exists. Like with any nonprofit, you hope that you work yourself out of a job. I hope that literacy isn't an issue in 20 years, but that's silly to even think it. We'll continue to increase access to books and access to the community that books can provide in the hopes of building that curious, connected, and inclusive community that we all want to see.

ES: I think that's a pretty good place to end.

JRS: Yeah. Nice chatting with you.

ES: Thank you for your time. (Both laughing.)