This month features poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction, essays, memoirs and more writing goodness than you can shake a stick at. My dad used to say that– “more than you can shake a stick at” — I wonder if that’s a common phrase. Bob was born in 1915 and I find…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: For ten generations now my ancestors have lived in the mountains of southwestern Virginia. Great-great-great-great Granddaddy (briefly) lived in Kentucky, until a posse chased him back across the Virginia state line where he (and we) stayed. We eat cornbread, never grits. The Ballad of Lockhart’s Mule: An…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: My people settled the Territory South of the River Ohio, which later took the name ‘Tennessee.’ (Before they were Tennesseans, they were North Carolinians and Virginians.) I can whittle in a tilted-back chair on the front porch, use a tissue-paper comb to keep a tune, and make…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Though the son of a Wedding DJ and the product of a place on the outskirts of Orlando, Florida, I was raised on collard greens, snap peas from my Papa’s garden and fellowship fried chicken after Sunday service at Grandma’s house. If I ever was thirsty I…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born in Bogotá, Colombia. I lived in South Carolina for almost a decade. I earned a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of South Carolina (the original USC), before moving to Clinton, where I worked for a year. I currently live in Bogotá, but…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: It’s the language around me that reminds me that I’m in the south. My sister is always fixin’ to do or to go somewhere. She used to live down the street from the POlice Station. Hell’s Bells my mother didn’t give a hot damn what the Sam…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born north of the Mason-Dixon line, but with a Southern spirit. Now I’m happily settled where Southern red cedar bedecked in Spanish moss shares the landscape with live oaks and cabbage palms—Florida,the land of flowers, where it’s harder to stop something from growing than to…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I grew up in New York with dyed-in-the wool Southern parents. They arrived in the city during The Depression determined “to make it,” as my father said, and they did. But they brought along with them the unwritten Southern rulebook of “shoulds” and expectations, which I called…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Last time I told ya’ll bout the tote sack my Momma made from Daddy’s bluejeans so I could pick cotton when I was six-year-old. Well, I’m gonna tell on myself a bit now – reckon the statute of limitations is run out. Me and my cousins, Michael…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I am a Mississippian, born in the Northern Hills and currently living in the flatlands of the Delta. I was fortunate enough to grow up in a rural community where I learned the value of family, faith, and food, even if I didn’t know to appreciate these…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Proud as a peacock to be truly southern. Born below the gnat line in middle Georgia. Lived in Hot Atlanta a few years, then raised a bunch youngins within a view of the north Georgia mountains. Currently spreading my feathers in the humid swamps of north-central Florida….

Southern Legitimacy Statement: What could be more Southern than a poem about Jesus? Well, okay: I grew up off the North Carolina coast and spent my childhood summers barefoot, hopping back and forth from the blazing-hot black asphalt of the road and the sandspur thickets along its sides. Despite those…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Michelle Renee Hoppe is south of Jordan in Saudi Arabia. She grew up in Florida for a hot minute, and she is a nomadic displaced and fragmented sort of ghosty person. Tulip Bulbs Dry on a Sunday Morning of a Utah Spring When I learned Mormonism uprooted reason,…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I’m so Southern, my Ancestry profile predicted my relationship with my stepmother to be a 5th-8th cousin. Does the shared DNA make me uncomfortable? Nope. It makes me an Alabamian. Jane Day The locals of Orem Crossroads don’t need a calendar to know when July rolls around….

Southern Legitimacy Statement: When I was a kid, I told my dad, sitting it the passenger side of his rusted Ford truck, “I ain’t a Southerner.” My dad, who lived his whole life in Appalachia said, “You don’t really have a choice in that.” It took me a while to…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Carl “Papa” Palmer of Old Mill Road in Ridgeway, Virginia, lives in University Place, Washington. He is retired from the military and Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) enjoying life as Papa to his grand descendants and being a Franciscan Hospice volunteer. Carl is a Pushcart Prize, Best of…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I’ve lived all of my life south of the Mason-Dixon Line. I come from Bandy, which is located in southwest Virginia. I was six when my family moved to Hampton Roads. My dad escaped a life in the coal mines to work as a pipefitter at the…

My Southern Legitimacy originates with water. In 1963, my father decided to take the family South not West because the water in LA upset his digestion. My eldest sister always regretted the choice but I revealed growing up on the coast of central Florida. I loved wandering through the palmetto…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Sometime before 1630, Richard Willam Silvester got off a ship and set up a farm at the edge of the Dismal Swamp, He also built a house in the area around Norfolk, Virginia. About a hundred years later, Johannes Setzer left Heidelberg and ended up in Catawba…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born and raised in Vance, Alabama, once a no-name town, now home to the Mercedes plant where everyone at one time worked or longed to work. I attended the University of Alabama and now live in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. I’ve gone from living among the trees…

Southern legitimacy statement: Appalachian born and raised, I grew up in the foothills of Georgia on stories of ghosts, graveyards, and granny witches. Although I left those mountains years ago for the suburbs of Atlanta, I still hear them call to me — a reminder where I’ll always belong. The…

My Southern Legitimacy Statement is as follows: I was born and raised in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and I received my bachelor’s and master’s degrees from William Carey University. Right now, though, I am a school administrator in Bangkok, Thailand and have been in English education for 20 years. I write as…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I grew up south of the airport. It wasn’t something I led with back then. Taking the bus into town was like traveling to another, more deliberate country. Truth is, pretty much everyone here talks true north, but chooses to live hugging the US/Canada border. A national…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: If everyone is south of somewhere then I suppose I am legitimate, because I was born and raised in the wilds of South Jersey. Also my mother’s father is from Kentucky. nevervision There was such a party in the ante times,if only it had happenedOh how they…