Rediscovering America, State by State

How well do you know the America beyond the borders that define where you live? For many, the 49 other states of the union are little more than states of mind - pre-conceived notions gleaned from pop culture, other people’s vacation photos and literature. Faulkner’s Mississippi, Annie Proulx’s Wyoming, John Cheever’s Connecticut - you get the idea.

But beyond broad brush strokes - think red states and blue states during campaign season - each American state has a geographical, cultural, and historical profile that defines it, and makes it wholly unique.

In the 1930s and 1940s, the Federal Writers' Project recruited the best scribes of the day – Ralph Ellison, Saul Bellow, Zora Neal Hurston among them – to write about their home states and to capture that uniqueness.

The writers Matt Weiland and Sean Wilsey have revived that historic effort. They assigned contemporary writers to unearth the stories buried in the weeds of their states. State by State: A Panoramic Portrait of America is their collection of those narratives, and editor Sean Wilsey joins Word of Mouth from New York City to tell us what they came up with. Sean currently serves as editor-at-large for McSweeney's Quarterly Concern. We also talk to Will Blythe, who wrote about his impressions of the Granite State.

New Hampshire listeners can go see contributor and award-winning graphic novelist Alison Bechdel on Tuesday, September 30th at 7 pm, at the Levenson Room of the Portsmouth Public Library. Her illustrated story describes her move from Minnesota to Vermont. The DVD that accompanies the book will also be screened there.

Watch the trailer for State by State: