Welcome to Y'all Weekly

A new weekly publication for North Carolina and all y'all.

We’ve been writers our entire lives.

Sometimes we didn’t notice it - we wrote for 13 years in school, and many of us wrote for another four years in college and beyond.

We write emails, tweets, reports, essays, resumes … writing is so ubiquitous we forget we’re writers, applying that title only to authors, journalists, and professional copywriters.

Personally, I wrote hundreds of thousands of words before thinking of myself as a writer this year - even though I’ve been a ghostwriter and a copywriter for much of my professional career. After putting my own name on an op-ed last fall, I started to write more and more, covering the Charlotte Football Club for Queen City Nerve, then starting my own blog about soccer.

It didn’t hurt that Charlotte FC had a successful year.

However, many of the institutions we care about in Charlotte, the Carolinas, and beyond aren’t experiencing the same level of success. The Actor’s Theatre of Charlotte, our city’s only such company for adult audiences, is closing its doors this month. The COVID-19 pandemic claimed other cultural homes like the Manor Theater and countless restaurants.

The Manor Theatre was a cultural casualty of COVID-19. (Photo by Sam Spencer)

We don’t want these institutions to disappear. So, as writers, we often support places we love, especially on our social platforms. I’ll admit the purpose of a post is sometimes different - a keepsake of time with friends, a way to make people jealous, boredom - but it can also be a powerful tool to build connection through new experiences.

Those are two of the goals of this publication - creating connections and exploring experiences. Call it building social capital, call it weaving Charlotte’s Web - after living through a pandemic that drove us even further into isolated bubbles than ever before, we want to stake out the territory of being connection evangelists.

Hence the name: Y’all Weekly. The word “y’all” embodies everything we’re about - it’s a touchstone of southern patois, our very own deep-fried second person plural pronoun. It’s pluralistic, it’s inclusive, it’s southern - all things that define us.

We’re excited to see where this goes, and glad you’re with us for the journey.

Welcome y’all.