“I had begun to figure out that there was much in the South that was beautiful and sublime provided you adjusted your old or soft or foreign way of looking.” — Marc Smirnoff, “The Best What?”

Odes by John Updike, Michael Martone, Nic Pizzolatto, Richard Bausch, Wells Tower, and more. “Writing on Writing” by Chris Bachelder and William Caverlee. Fiction by Kevin Brockmeier, Karen Russell, James Whorton Jr., and Jason Ockert.

David Ramsey profiles the world’s greatest Pac-Man player. Matt Dellinger and Ada Liana Bidiuc look at the remnants of the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina.