People may think of Southern humor in terms of missing teeth and outhouse accidents but the best of it is a rich vein running through the best of Southern literature.

I had in mind a message although I hope it doesn't intrude too badly persuading Americans and especially Southerners of the critical importance of land and our vanishing natural environment and wildlife.

I'm launching my own festival in South Wales. It's something I've wanted to do for a long time. It's going to be held at Margam Park because I wanted the venue to be as close to my home as possible.

Women are oppressed in the east in the west in the south in the north. Women are oppressed inside outside home a woman is oppressed in religion she is oppressed outside religion.

One of the great privileges of having grown up in a middle-class literary English household but having gone to school in the front lines in Southeast London was that I became half-street-urchin and half-good-boy at home. I knew that dichotomy was possible.

And I come here as a daughter raised on the South Side of Chicago - by a father who was a blue-collar city worker and a mother who stayed at home with my brother and me.

The Deep South has a completely different history both good and bad that is fascinating for everybody. It makes people work together who usually don't and that sounds like a cliche in so many ways but it actually happened... and it happened because of a beautiful idea.

We have our own history our own language our own culture. But our destiny is also tied up with the destinies of other people - history has made us all South Africans.

Emergency health care for illegal aliens along the southwestern border is already costing area hospitals $200 million a year with perhaps another $100 million in extended care costs.

The people of South and Central Texas and the Coastal Bend need jobs they need health care they need water infrastructure improvements they need a quality education and they need the resources to keep our borders safe and secure.