Robert Howell: Tonight
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I was born and raised in Lakeland, Florida. That ought to be enough.
**
Nicole Yurcaba: White December
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
Nicole Yurcaba is a West Virginian bear huntin' poet, backwoods feminist, farm hand, adjunct instructor of English—basically a Jill-of-all-trades-mistress-to-none. Her family on the maternal side hails from Southern West Virginia and Kentucky. She is finely trained in the Southern art of bear huntin' and 'coon-huntin' with hound (RIP--IKE). When not writing poetry or short stories, she enjoys outfishing and outhunting her father and boyfriend in the wild mountains of eastern West Virginia. In the schools where she teaches, she is the only instructor to teach class while wearing cowgirl-cut Wranglers, Laredo cowboy boots, and a Confederate flag belt buckle.
In life, she refuses to buy a map; doing so could ruin everything.
**
Jamie Poole: All of me
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I was born and raised in Saraland, AL. I love biscuits, cheese grits, and okra. All of my words have at least two syllables, and I've been cow tippin. I am legit. :)
**
Jim Davis: In a Coffee Shop in the Plaza on Weed Street
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I spent this weekend past in Bethesda, Maryland, burying and celebrating my Grandmother – a Williams/Davis/Hoover who first was Pessou, a branch of the Louisiana swamp grass family come east upon the war of northern aggression. The small clapboard church atop the hill in which she and our family have gone to rest since the 1700s is lined with framed etchings of Generals Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee; acorns from the chapel’s ancient oak are planted across the south, east, mid- and mountain west in her honor. Davises, many, have been schooled at Sewanee (the University of the South), and my Godfather, Bob, went to earn his MD at the U. of Tennessee. Mine come from the southern banks of the Mississippi and the horse pastures of Rattle and Snap, where southern charm, manners, and hospitality have not been lost on the branches of the Davis tree – not too an affinity for vodka-lemonade on a dusky sun porch, finding ways to beat the heat, and life with deep appreciation of our firmly planted roots.
**
