PHOTOGRAPH BY PHILLIP PARKER / © MEMPHIS CONVENTION & VISITORS BUREAU
above: Beale Street nightlife with musician Muck Sticky (far left) and the Beale Street Flippers.
Virginia native Cara Ellen Modisett studied English and music at James Madison University and earned her MFA in creative nonfiction from Goucher College in Baltimore. She served as editor of Blue Ridge Country magazine in Roanoke, associate editor of The Roanoker magazine, and reporter and announcer for WVTF public radio. She has written text for four books on the Blue Ridge Parkway; her work has also appeared in Artemis, Still: The Journal, Virginia Living, Flycatcher, and elsewhere. Modisett founded a reading series in Roanoke, Writers at Liminal. Since moving to Memphis in 2014, she began a similar program here, called Words3. She is presently the minister of communication for Church of the Holy Communion.
Citywith a Soul A NEWCOMER TO MEMPHIS TELLS US WH AT TO SEE , HE A R , SMELL , A ND TASTE IN A PL ACE SHE NOW C A LLS HOME .
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by cara ellen modisett
ometime late last fall, I knew I’d settled into Memphis when I walked into Republic Coffee, stepped up to the counter, and the barista asked, just to confirm, “cafe au lait?” The first time I moved to a new city — at that time, Roanoke, Virginia, two hours from the city where I was born — I told my mother that I’d know I was at home when I walked into the grocery store and saw people I knew. Some years later, in Memphis, 12 hours from the city where I was born, it was a coffee shop.
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