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Well, I'm from the South originally. I grew up in South Carolina definitely learning about manners and being proper and having to go to cotillions.

I live in Cullowhee, North Carolina. That's where I teach, at Western Carolina University. That region is where my family has lived for a long time and that region is my landscape.

I love North Carolina.

I'm from Dallas. My whole family is based in Texas and Mississippi and Arkansas, spread throughout most of the South.

All of us in the Ball family in South Carolina, from the time we're children, hear stories about our ancestors, the slave owners.

I met people when we lived down in Raleigh who'd ask where I grew up, and I'd say about two hours west of Asheville, and they'd say they didn't know there was any North Carolina two hours west of Asheville. It was in many ways an isolated place.

I grew up in Southern California, Simi Valley. I've lived in the same house all my life.

I grew up in southwestern Virginia. I was born in South Carolina, but only because my parents had a vacation cabin or something there on the beach. I was like a summer baby. But I did grow up in the South. I grew up in serious, serious Appalachia, in a very small town.

I grew up in Florida in different cities. I was born in Mississippi. My parents moved a lot, so I moved to Tennessee, Alabama, South Carolina, Virginia, all through the South. But my family's roots were from central Florida, like Daytona Beach area, so we ended up moving there.

I'm from Georgia, and everybody gathers around food in the South.