Country Roads Magazine

09/24/2026

Local creatives—here is my periodic effort to bolster the rolodex!

Country Roads Magazine is looking to work with Louisiana- and Mississippi-based (or -rooted) freelance writers, photographers, and illustrators! Lately I've found myself in particular need of more folks with a talent for writing about local food culture and restaurants—but also stories about language, history, and tradition; art/book criticism; explorations of our natural history and environment; business and nonprofit profiles; and "driving-distance" travel.

Not familiar with the sorts of stories that fill our pages? You can browse at countryroadsmag.com, flip through the e-books at issuu.com/countryroadsmag, or pick up a print copy in the Greater Baton Rouge area.

If you're interested in working with us, please introduce yourself and share some of your work at [email protected]
(Bonus points if you come with ideas!)

—Jordan LaHaye Fontenot, Managing Editor

09/24/2026

Growing up in Mississippi and spending time in Texas and the Carolinas, the eighty-two-year-old Dunlap has long been influenced by the sublime beauty of Southern landscapes. When he drives through his old stomping ground, he often dwells on the lives of his grandfathers, both farmers and the last of their kind in his family lines—bearing witness to the land they worked.

“It’s the same landscape,” he said. “I’m just doing something different with it.”

Read on at countryroadsmag.com

Story by Jacqueline DeRobertis-Braun
Paintings by William Dunlap
Photo by Kay Holloway

09/23/2026

At the nineteenth annual Euro Fest on October 2 and 3, more than 1,600 European automobiles and motorcycles from across the Southeast will arrive at Renaissance at Colony Park. The weekend begins with a Friday morning convoy of vintage roadsters and modern exotics traveling from Downtown Jackson to the Governor’s Mansion for a public display, followed by Saturday’s showcase spanning four blocks of Renaissance. This year’s America 250 Showcase adds a special anniversary angle with a “Ford vs. Land Rover” feature pairing historic and modern models. Awards are divided (mostly) by country, including German, Italian, and British cars, with partnering sponsorship awards also available.

Sponsored by Explore Ridgeland

Recognized as one of the “10 Best Car Shows” in the U.S., Euro Fest transforms Ridgeland, Mississippi, into a European concourse of timeless automotive design

09/22/2026

"As September’s Harvest Moon implies, ‘tis the season for my fall seed collecting to begin," writes gardening columnist Jess Cole. "Collecting seed is among the most beloved tasks in my gardening practice, and the sorting, thereof, is my greatest meditation. Even more rewarding: seed sorting has become a family pastime. Whatever the season, my three-year-old and I find seeds to bring home."

Find the full guide at countryroadsmag.com

09/21/2026

The modern world offers an endless supply of stories polished for streaming, shortened for scrolling, and designed for consumption via the confines of a screen. Yet there persists a form of theatre that asks its audience to sit still, lean forward, and encounter others, with none of the protection of distance.

This newer wave of work does not rely on spectacle or the certainty of a story already settled. It embraces people who are still becoming, still making mistakes, and still negotiating the space between who they are, and who they once hoped to be. Across New Orleans, playwrights, performers, and independent theatre companies are developing productions that feel immediate, emotionally exposed, and closely connected to the lives that audiences are living now.

Read on at countryroadsmag.com

Story and photos by Brett Barnes

09/18/2026

"There’s a non-zero chance that my friends and I held the first performance of a Tennessee Williams play," writes Chris Turner-Neal. "Records are incomplete, and so while 'The Strangers' was probably broadcast twice on the radio, once in Iowa and once in New Orleans, it’s not technically proven. Our read at a Buenos Aires kitchen table on a Friday afternoon, with an audience consisting of one disinterested tuxedo cat named Phoebe II, is the first definitively documented performance of Williams’s foray into the once-popular genre of radio suspense plays."

Read the story at countryroadsmag.com

Illustration by Kourtney Zimmerman

09/14/2026

"Improv comedy came to me at a time when, like most newly-minted adults, I was trying to figure out who I was and what I was meant to be. I had just moved to the North Carolina coast when I stumbled into a friendship with members of The Other Side, a local improv comedy troupe. They were unlike any people I had ever met before. There was an uncanny harmony to their interactions—a quickfire back-and-forth banter I’d only later recognize as the “yes, and …” philosophy that is foundational to the art of improv. At the time, though, I only knew two things: I had never laughed so hard in my life, and I needed to learn how to do what they did."

—Kristen Foster

Read on at countryroadsmag.com

09/11/2026

While war devastates, love preserves. In a profoundly paradoxical way, some of the most enduring love stories have emerged during episodes of intense violence and conflict.

Yesterday, September 10, members of Metairie’s Mélange Dance Theatre presented a performance of "Love Letters of WWII" at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., in partnership with the Veterans History Project.

Learn more at countryroadsmag.com

Story by Odessa Barattieri

09/11/2026

In Louisiana’s Cajun Bayou, a proper party is never more than a week away. From outdoor music festivals to overflowing black pots, fall is the season when Lafourche Parish puts on a rolling celebration that you don’t want to miss.

Read the article below to learn more.

Sponsored by Louisiana's Cajun Bayou

In South Louisiana, nowhere boasts a fuller fall calendar than Lafourche Parish

09/10/2026

In the late 1980s, Dylan met up with the famed Canadian producer Daniel Lanois at the Marie Antoinette Hotel in the French Quarter (now the Hotel Le Marais) to talk about working together in the future. The conversation went well, and in the early spring of 1989, Dylan moved down to New Orleans for a few months to record with Lanois. These sessions resulted in Dylan’s 1989 album 'Oh Mercy,' which was written and recorded in a rambling old Victorian mansion on Soniat Street near Audubon Park. Even the most cynical, hard-nosed music journalists often consider 'Oh Mercy' to be Dylan’s finest release of the decade.

Read the story by Ingrid Jensen at countryroadsmag.com