Lisa J. Gouveia

Editor and Publisher

Austin, Texas

My passion is promoting the great art, music, writing, and culture of the American South and Southwest, especially the indie/under-the-radar stuff. I have a long history in graphic design and  publications. I was Managing Editor/Art Director for a small Southern print mag that shut down in 2011. But I kept getting e-mails, press releases, and even some submissions sent to me personally, just to see if I could help out. A couple small presses sent me books. Bands sent CDs. Soon I had almost an issue's worth of stuff sitting in my inbox. I even have the software to lay it all out. And a whole long list of ideas and stuff. There are some great Southern magazines, and I love them. But their vision of the South often doesn't include some of the new, emerging voices and diverse cultures of today's South, the real South and the Southwest. So I'm relaunching REAL SOUTH Magazine as REAL SOUTH/WEST Magazine.

John Dufresne

Fiction Editor and Contributing Editor

Dania Beach, Florida

John Dufresne is the author of the novels Louisiana Power & Light, Love Warps the Mind a Little, Deep in the Shade of Paradise, and most recently, Requiem, Mass. He's also written two collections of stories, The Way That Water Enters Stone and Johnny Too Bad. His two guides to writing fiction, The Lie That Tells a Truth and Is Life Like This? are used in many university writing programs.  He has won the Yankee Magazine award for fiction, the Transatlantic Review/Henfield Foundation Award, and a PEN Syndicated Fiction award. His novel Louisiana Power & Light was a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection and a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. He also wrote the screenplay for the short film The Freezer Jesus and, with Donald Papy, the feature film To Live and Die in Dixie, both directed by Harper Philbin. He teaches creative writing at Florida International University in Miami, and he is also the editor of the anthology Blue Christmas.

Cindy Chinelly

Poetry Editor

Dania Beach, Florida

Cindy Chinelly is a poet and short story writer, the author of the chapbook The Coralroot (Livingston University Press). Her work has appeared in numerous literary journals, including the Montana Review, North Stone Review, and Graham House Review, MidAmerican Review, and the SunSentinel newspaper/ Sunshine Magazine. She teaches creative writing at Florida International University and is co-editor of the anthology Having a Wonderful Time: An Anthology of South Florida Writers (edited with John Dufresne and Michael Hettich, Simon & Schuster).

The rest of REAL SOUTH/WEST Magazine comes from a network of freelancers all over the South and Southwest, particularly Texas, New Mexico, Florida, Louisiana, Tennessee, and North Carolina.