Darel Snodgrass talks with Willy about his years growing up in Rolling Fork, Mississippi, in the turbulent 1960s, his life in and out of Memphis, and the paths and choices that led him here.

Bearden has an artist’s commitment to truth-telling, and, as becomes clear over the course of his youthful epiphanies, that unflinching honesty served him well in his quest for a life of some significance. As the Tennessee Williams quote beginning the book states, “No one is ever free until they tell the truth about themselves and the life into which they’ve been cast.”

Willy Bearden sits down and talks “Mississippi Existentialism” with Eric Barnes of The Sidebar.