In these excerpts from an interview conducted in Atlanta, Georgia on 22 February, 2008, Jake York talks with Natasha Trethewey about a variety of issues related to his poetry and its ties to his childhood home of Gadsden in northeast Alabama. Among other topics, York discusses the genesis of the poem "Walt Whitman in Alabama," the ways in which racial violence and white supremacy have been inscribed onto the local landscape, his interest in the history of industry and manufacturing in the region, the influence of his upbringing and family life, and his relationship to the idea of the "southern writer."