Steve Meador: Calls From The Southern Forest : Fiction : November 2019
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I still say y’all, ain’t and I reckon. I live near Tampa and I would say that is nearly southern as one can get, although I don’t live near a swamp. Calls From the Southern Forest Today,...
Richard Weaver : Three Southern Last Word poems : Poetry : November 2019
Southern Legitimacy Statement: The folks below were born in Alabama, Louisiana, and North Carolina. Unless there is a statute of limitations on the Southern Legitimacy Statement I sent you in 2016 when you kindly published my “Mule Toe” poem, I...
Alice Gorman: Southern Cross (poetry)
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Dear editors, if born and raised in Memphis, Tennessee, doesn’t qualify for a head to toe, imbued southerner, don’t read my poem.For twenty years, I have belonged to the Live Poets’ Society of Boca Grande, Florida, where I...
Terry Barr : Southern Bastards: Questioning Our Legitimacy
Southern Legitimacy Statement: As a boy in Bessemer, Alabama, I lived for Mondays for they were new comic book days. I’d head to the Stop and Shop on 4th Avenue in hopes that a new Batman, Detective, Justice League, or...
Karl Kirkland: “Count No Count” and “No Show Jones”: The Very Best of the Southern Gothic Tradition (essay)
Southern Legitimacy Statement: (In Faulknerian style) I was born in LA (Lower Alabama) rural Escambia County, Alabama (near the state line) right above Escambia County, Florida, (who spends its whole life trying to be Escambia County, Alabama), and raised in a...
Amanda Pugh: It’s a Southern Thing (memoir – festivals)
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I am as Southern as grits, biscuits, and gravy, having the double blessing of being brought into this world in the great state of Georgia (Atlanta to be precise) and having my raising in the Volunteer State of...
Claire Fullerton: A Southern Voice
Southern Legitimacy Statement I come from Memphis. I claim ownership to her nuances, which I wear like a badge of honor. And it’s not so much that I come from Memphis as I come from her ways and means. There’s...
Lemoncharles by southern writer John Calvin Hughes
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I’m John Calvin Hughes, son of a son of a preacher chased out of Mississippi for plucking the flock. I’m a southern boy who moved south and found himself surrounded by Yankees. I’m in Florida. There’s not a hill in sight and the restaurants that specialize in “Real Southern Cooking” put sugar in the cornbread. My own son told me the cat pushing on his chest was "making bagels"!
Deb Jellett “Southerness”
I used to say I was from the South, but not "of" it. I think I just had to find the right kind of Southerness.
Danny P. Barbare: Southern Tea
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I love sweet iced tea. Pecan pie. Have two trees in the yard. And one large Magnolia I could once jump over; it's now about 40 feet tall.
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Lee Wright — Tuesday Evening In A Small Southern Town
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Lee Wright was born, raised, and educated in a tiny textile mill town just across the Georgia line from Chattanooga. In spite of that, he managed to learn to translate things like “I knowed that he’d get throwed outta school for drankin’ ‘n’ when he growed up, he wuddn’t gonna ‘mount to nuttin’.” into actual English sentences.
Poems Submitted Without a Southern Legitimacy Statement
The Dead Mule is getting too many poems submitted without a Southern Legitimacy Statement. Now we are southern and polite, so we usually return these and point out the error. But we are getting more submissions these days, so please...
Eric Olsen :: Life, Legacy, Fractured Spines, and the Power of Now ::
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I am a grits, sweet tea, and collards enthusiast. I have a recipe for each that I make myself regularly. *ya’ll need to read this essay.. Life, Legacy, Fractured Spines, and the Power of Now April 13,...
Barry Gordon Thompson-Cook :: It Was On a Bayou ::
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Barry Gordon Thompson-Cook was born in Louisiana and is buried there. In between, he lived in Dallas, Omaha before moving back to Louisiana. He left his beloved Opelousas to marry a Yankee, to the horror of his...
Holly Thompson :: The Heeler’s Lyric; The Facts of the Legal Matter ::
Southern Legitimacy Statement: My submissions are sent to you with a promise of Southern Legitimacy, as I was born in Oak Ridge, Tennessee (birthplace of the atomic bomb) and continue to capture and pen down just a few of the...
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