‘Loved your frock, Queen Camilla told the Teenage Dream singer. Here is a collection of some of those Atlantic newsletter editions and articles, as a way to begin diving into her rich and varied writing. A cursteying Katy Perry beamed alongside Lionel Richie as King Charles and Queen Camilla made a surprise appearance on American Idol. But she has also delved into every corner of our contemporary culture, recently examining what her Twitter account means to her, and Americans’ fascination with royalty.

At The Atlantic, her newsletter, Unsettled Territory, has primarily become a place to do what Perry calls “rootwork,” examining America’s history to better understand the present. Perry is a professor of African American studies at Princeton who has written a number of books about the Black experience. “I write because we children of the lash-scarred, rope-choked, bullet-ridden, desecrated are still here, standing.” “I write for my people,” Perry said as she accepted the award. She visited more than a dozen Southern cities with an eye toward finding the hidden horrors of their history but also the many acts of resistance that return humanity to the American story. As she wrote in The Atlantic, the South is “both an idea and a region,” and one she says she has been obsessed with since her birth. Melding the language of poetry and historical research, Perry sought to understand the South, the region where she was born and which contains, she believes, the key to understanding America. Imani Perry, a contributing writer to The Atlantic, has won the National Book Award for Nonfiction for her book South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation.

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