Southern Legitimacy Statement: I live a little over eight miles south of the Mason-Dixon Line in a state carved out of glaciers and war. I only eat Mister Bee’s potato chips. Tracing Inert Gasses on West Virginia Day Truth is, I don’t really knowwhat xenon is, but some nightsfull up…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I lived in Kentucky in the 1970s and taught American literature and creative writing at Transylvania University in Lexington, where I frequented the literary scene and gave poetry readings. One of my novels, Devil Dancer, is set in Lexington, another novel, Blacksnake’s Path, has a chapter set…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I live in a rural Virginia county where Robert E. Lee spent the night on his way to Appomattox. I make cornbread and fry okra, and live two miles from where Thomas Jefferson designed a home for a poor cousin, a younger son. I want statues removed,…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I have lived in Virginia for nearly 30 years, but that’s not my SLS. I grew up in south Minneapolis, playing hockey outdoors every winter day unless it snowed too hard, so that’s not my SLS. A long time ago, I married an Alabama girl. At least…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was raised in Dallas Texas but went out on my on at fourteen; joined the army at 15 and was in jail by 17. I learned a lot while in jail. I learned how to slip out of hand-cuffs and slide down a bunch of tied…

Not a southern legitimacy statement, but a statement nonetheless: I was born and raised in Olsztyn, Poland. I studied history at UWM in Olsztyn and currently live and write in Gdansk. born It would take two flights of narrow stairs below the street.The room filled slowly until obstinate gravity suffocated…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born and raised in Michigan, which is south of Canada. When I was 12 years old I was stranded in Kentucky for a week, which is south of Cincinnati. I am a freelance writer and have a degree in History and Political Science from Central…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: My family has lived in the south for around 400 years. Something Simple The days are getting longer and longer, a deputy marshal got a shave afterkilling a man on the Western. I want something simple like whenmy grandfather sliced open awatermelon with a big knife onhis…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Texas born. Texas raised. Anyone not born in Texas is a Yankee in my book. I think that about covers it. Surely Not the Likeness What’s the easiest way to make a city boy holler? Turn off his air conditioner. A city boy can’t stand having his…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: A native Atlantan (not many of those) with deep matriarchal roots in Savannah, I eventually ended up enrolling at The University of the South in Sewanee, TN, where I now teach a course on Tennessee Williams. I can drawl if I have to, but I’ve found it…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: My parents are both Mississippians. My grandfather, Reuben Davis, published two novels about life in the Delta. I grew up in Auburn, Alabama, catching snakes, turtles, lizards, and crawdads, and went to college at the University of the South (Sewanee), where I now teach. I still eye…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born in Confederacy’s Capitol Richmond, Virginia in 1960. By the 1970’s my family had moved to Petersburg, Virginia. I metal detected at Battlefield Park near a grown over ditch that was “The Crater.” Every so often some fool in Walnut Hill would put a parrot…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Coming from Florida, I am no stranger to wild pets. Kat Kitchins in Neptune Beach was notorious for nursing newborn wolves, and I’ve seen a baby gator in a bathtub in Tallahassee. Over the past few months, I’ve attempted to sketch a next-door neighbor in Carolina, both…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: My family came here the year before the Mayflower on the ship that Pocahontas went back to the mother country on. They settled in what’s now Patrick County, VA, and there they’ve stayed ever since. Except my grandmother, who raised me. She ran from the farm the…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I am a southern transplant, having lived in the south for over 16 years after relocating from Southern California at 19 years old. I found my heart in the small, coastal city of Virginia Beach and now, live in Orlando. Wasteland The digital clock in my parent’s…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born in Augusta Georgia, in the same hospital where my father was born, in the same town where my father’s parents still lived, where one great grandparent still lived, and where I grew up and raised my own family. I’m still here. I lived a…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I grew up in north Alabama, where I learned to shoot Roman candles at bulls from a truck bed, where I caught a baseball with my nose before I could catch one barehanded, where I lay in an ant bed so the doc could check my ankle…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born and raised in Georgia and that’s where I’ve returned. I’ve worked at Southern newspapers. And I enjoy mater sandwiches each summer using tomatoes grown at home. Shooting Stars Preferred Mike wanted to discover a new planet or comet. Everybody was finding…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I see a funeral, a widow, her daughter, and her son telling her what uncle did to … Bunched Together I want you to consider for a moment –You walk into the Trident Health Center’s specialty clinic and smell sugar from the cakes and cookies, which, for…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: There’s nothing that steeps a Southerner in their own Southerness quite like living outside of the South. Having grown up in Memphis, I now live in Southern California, where, every day, it seems, I have to explain my Delta accent. I hold fiercely to my Southerness as…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: …[A]nd to further cement my southern roots, I was born in Columbia, SC, raised, largely, in Oklahoma and Texas, and lived in Tennessee and Georgia for a significant portion of my adult life. Hope my southern credentials are up to snuff! At the Edge There is an…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: My parents grew up West Virginia hillbillies, but moved to Pennsylvania (for my dad’s job), where I was born. In North Carolina since age six, for sixty years now, I’ve hailed from the South—North Carolina, Georgia, and currently, Tennessee. When I first came south, I never expected…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I am so Southern I capitalize it. I am so Southern, every Sunday my dad would drive us out to the country to see the old home place where he had a pet pig and ate turnips on the way home from school. I am so Southern…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I attended Tulane University and lived and worked in New Orleans upon completion of my studies. From an apartment by the Fairgrounds, in the middle 1990s, I published the avant-garde literary magazine, Mystery Itch. Mentally, I never left the city. “In Old Illinois” My mother has lost…