Guest
Joseph (Joe) B. Atkins is a veteran writer and professor emeritus of journalism at the University of Mississippi. A North Carolina native and Vietnam veteran who studied at East Carolina University, the University of Munich, and American University, Atkins is the author of several books. His latest, Harry Dean Stanton: Hollywood’s Zen Rebel (University Press of Kentucky, 2020) received the 2021 Bronze Medal for biography from the Independent Publisher Book Awards. His other books include the novel Casey’s Last Chance (Sartoris Literary Group, 2015) and Covering for the Bosses: Labor and the Southern Press (University Press of Mississippi, 2008), a book about the Southern labor movement. He was editor/contributing author of The Strangers Among Us: Tales from a Global Migrant Worker Movement (LabourStart, 2016) and The Mission: Journalism, Ethics and the World (Iowa State University Press, 2002), both of which included Atkins' reportage from such far-flung places as Argentina, Germany, Poland, Slovakia, Singapore, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. His bylined work has been published in Mexico, England, Poland, India, Japan, and the Middle East and translated into Japanese and Arabic. A former congressional correspondent with Gannett News Service in Washington, D.C., Atkins also worked at newspapers across the U.S. South. His articles and stories have appeared in a wide range of publications, from USA Today, Baltimore Sun, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the Guadalajara (Mexico) Reporter to In These Times, Oxford American, Noir City, and Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. He was awarded the “Advocate of the Year” by the Mississippi Association for Justice in 2011 for his writings on social justice issues. He can be contacted at jbatkins3@. His blog is .
