Southern Legitimacy Statement: Virginia Lee does not consider herself a poet, but she can write a decent set of song lyrics when the wind is just right and the moon’s phase is amenable. Lee mostly writes colloquial fiction set in the American South as suits her otherwise seemingly useless degree…

Well, we’re all in this together, aren’t we folks? Spend a little time away from the humdrum here on the Mule and read your way into some alternate reality. If you’re reading the Mule for the first or the fiftieth time, we welcome you to our little corner of the…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I lived my entire childhood under the shadow of the Brushy Mountains in Western North Carolina. I lived in a farmhouse built in 1897 or so that was bought by my great great grandmother Pearl who was a madame in a brothel. My family was always rich…

I have no clue what information is pertinent, so without further ado: K. J. Kovacs – Southern Legitimacy Statement : I had a bona fide sign from the King. Make that signs, plural. I’m tempted not to tell you about the signs, because maybe you don’t deserve to know. I…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Mark Mulholland is not from the South and has never been there. In fact Mark isn’t from the USA at all, or indeed Canada or the UK or even Australia or anywhere snazzy like that. Mark, through no fault of his own, was born and raised in…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Gerry who’s worked as a healthcare consultant in Nashville, partied with relatives living in Greensboro and stayed awhile in Sunflower County, Mississippi. “FAMILIAS” Thirty-Seven Year Kvetch “I think it’s just elegant to have an imagination. I just have no imagination at all. I have lots of other…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I’ve been cogitating Southern Lit for over sixty years, from the time I was a student of Donald Davidson, one of them Fugitive guys at Vanderbilt. (I was also on a fancy literary panel with John Crowe Ransom. Wrote a poem for Allen Tate which he said,…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Married to a woman from Ocilla, GA, who dated a lobbyist for the Tennessee Medical Association, who collected fascinating (and actual) causes of death, hence the title. Went to Bed Fine, Woke Up Dead SHE’D GONE TO bed in the Johnson City Stopover – that much was…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born in the Cumberland Mountains in the Heart of Appalachia on Virginia’s Crooked Road near the border of Tennessee, Kentucky and North Carolina. My dad was a tobacco farmer, my brothers were loggers, and my uncle died of Black Lung Disease from his work in…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I’ve lived at the margins for some time, within the southern sections of northern territories that is. I went to school in Southern Connecticut and now I live in the Southern Tier of upstate New York. As if I was planted, just above my own navel, when…

My Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born and grew up in the pines and blackwater creeks of central Louisiana. In the Army I had the privilege to spend some time in Tennessee and Kentucky, but the only bluegrass band I ever got to see was in a desert in Egypt…

My Southern legitimacy statement is as follows: I received a BA in creative writing at Penn State prior to moving to Chincoteague, VA and working as a house painter. Finding that career much too difficult, I moved to Greensboro, NC and received an MA in Theatre at UNCG. My writing…

My Southern Legitimacy Statement: I moved to a small farm on Virginia’s Eastern Shore in 2004 on which I put a conservation easement. The community of woods, pond, fields and salt marsh will be forever protected from the ravages of development and industrialized chicken farming flooding in from the north….

Southern Legitimacy Statement: One hundred percent Southern. Born and bred in deep southern Georgia below the gnat line, and currently living in the humid swamps of north-central Florida. If I were a death row inmate my request for a last meal would consist of fried chicken livers, harmony grits. pickled…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Born and raised in Mississippi and never lived anywhere else. Bipolar Poetry Kindling Every guy I write is you. I type your name and delete it, type and delete and type and delete. (Google is my only confidante) You’re in my brain imprinted just like a flame…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Alex Pickens grew up in Southern Appalachia and has been studying and writing satire for decades, though he is seeking help. His comedy has been widely published and his screenplays have even earned him invitations to Hollywood. In his spare time he reads the Classics, fingerpicks the…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I am a farm girl who still reaches for her gum boots to go feed the birds. I grew up in the arms of a grandmother who worked 40 hours a week for 36 years in a tube factory and a retired grandfather who, after a heart…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: You can’t go much further south than living in Miami Beach. Although most would disqualify my city as The South, I promise I can fish, cook collard greens, and sing all the lyrics to Southern rap songs better than any true Southerner. I also say “Yes, ma’am,”…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I hail from the Deep South–Hattiesburg, Mississippi. While I now live overseas in Bangkok, Thailand, I make sure to incorporate Southern living on a daily basis. I cook biscuits often, read to my daughter in my best Southern accent, and encourage my colleagues to say “y’all.” It’s…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Though I live in Massachusetts now, I was born and raised in Houston, and part of my heart will always be in Texas. I know some folks don’t call Texas the South, but I always have, seeing how my mom always had a can of bacon grease…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Dad’s from New Orleans, my mother has roots in North Carolina. I grew up straddling the line between Southern Maryland and Washington D.C. I’ve currently been living in Michigan for 2 years. What I miss most is the warm weather and crab legs! Pigeons Pigeons walk when…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was ten years old when I first visited a hospital. I had been chasing a black snake through an open corn field where someone had left a pitchfork. One of the tines tore through my foot and sent me screaming toward the house. The snake got…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Clinton Myers is a native of Tracy City, Tennessee currently living in Nashville. An attorney by trade, this marks his first foray into flash fiction. The Road to Yonder “One time I was heading around this turn right up here and just on the other side of…

STATEMENT OF LEGITIMACY I still have not gotten over that ‘Shake ‘N Bake’ television commercial from the 70s where that girl uses the world’s worse Southern accent to ask her mother if she can pitch in on the biscuit making. “Cunn ah hep?!” If it were up to me, somebody…