The Bitter Southerner Reveals The All Women Issue, Available Now

In the media brand’s largest issue to date, every word, every photo, every illustration, every assignment, and every edit, was made by women

The Bitter Southerner, the James Beard Award–winning independent media brand telling important stories through a Southern lens, reveals The All Women Issue. Its largest and first themed issue ever includes stories, essays, poetry, and art by and about 90 different women culminating into a cultural document of historical significance depicting what it is like to be a woman in 2024.

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Kacey Musgraves on the cover of The Bitter Southerner's Issue No. 8 The All Women Issue / Courtesy: The Bitter Southerner

Every element of the magazine — from the words and illustrations to the editing — was made by women. Even advertising dollars were put up by female-founded companies including Tibi, Hable, and Alabama Chanin.

The Bitter Southerner’s All Women Issue (Issue No. 8) is electric, vibrating with female creativity, resilience, ingenuity, vulnerability, activism, joy, and grief. Subjects include beauty school, insomnia, odd birds, women demanding reproductive rights, and an end to gun violence.

“We always publish a diverse chorus of voices, but for this very special edition, we invited only the women to sing,” Co-Founder Kyle Tibbs Jones writes in her editor’s letter. She adds, “This is not your mother’s women’s issue. In our All Women Issue, the emphasis is on ALL. In a critical election year for our country, we’ve created a magazine filled with storytelling and poetry and essays and photography that explore how we’re feeling, right now, as women.”

The All Women Issue is available now to order at bittersoutherner.com and at select retailers.

Highlights include:

• On the cover, Kacey Musgraves photographed by her sister Kelly Christine Sutton, talking with journalist Christina Lee about her inner source of strength, how she prefers to lead with softness and love, and her new album Deeper Well
• Award-winning author and legendary food historian Toni Tipton-Martin writes “A Letter from Home” about the black women who've taught America to cook
• Preeminent writer, professor and social commentator Roxane Gay writes the magazine’s feature essay on TikTok
• At 83, the one and only, Joan Baez shares a heart-wrenching retrospective poem
• “The Unstoppable Women of Nashville,” a photo essay capturing Gloria Johnson, Alison Russell, SistaStrings, Caroline Randall, and the mothers of The Covenant School
• Soulful and striking collage art by Atlanta artist Shanequa Gay
• And more powerful contributions from A-list writers Elissa Altman, Sabrina Orah Mark, Holley Haworth, Shane Mitchell, and others
• Brilliant “books we’d like to see” from media moguls Carla Hall, Errin Haines, Marissa Moss, Helen Rosner, Kerry Diamond, and Jamila Robinson.
• And because we’ve got to laugh, Jewel Wicker talks to fiercely funny Southern women, Dolcé Sloan, Heather McMahan, Leslie Jones, and others.

Through storytelling and activism, The Bitter Southerner is leading a movement across digital and print magazines, books, podcasts, and commerce. The media brand remains on the forefront reporting a true, more progressive, more modern account of what the South is, and thus, what America is today. From the beginning, The Bitter Southerner challenged the models of traditional media, launching 11 years ago with long-form stories and ecommerce when neither were embraced. This year, The Bitter Southerner won its ninth James Beard Award and has seen tremendous growth and profitability over the last four years. The magazine has a 96 percent retention rate among subscribers.

ABOUT THE BITTER SOUTHERNER

A beacon from the American South and a bellwether for the nation, The Bitter Southerner is an Athens, Ga.-based independent publisher, founded in 2013, that connects an activated and vocal global community working to make the South, and America, a better place. Today, The Bitter Southerner publishes three print magazines annually, books under its BS Publishing imprint, the “Batch” podcast, and iconic apparel and home goods in the BS General Store. bittersoutherner.com

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