Brain Fertilizer
2026 means the Mule’s been Online for THIRTY years.
Rebuilt three times, now hosted by GoDaddy. Ain’t that sumpin’?
Older than my grandchildren. Over half my life.
Published once a month through May 15, 2026. Post-May? Sporadic.
Submissions by invitation only.
Let us begin:
*First off, the Mule was compromised in 2015, so if you want to read what we published from around 2003 to 2015, you’ll need to go to our WordPress-hosted blog to find some of those posts at TheDeadMule.wordpress.com. We’re working to restore the Old Mule but most of our archival work is done over @wordpress on a free site. Some of the posts are fubarred and need reformatting. If you notice such a thing, email me and let me know.
The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature began as (if I can recall correctly) the Eastern North Carolina Literary Journal funded by a grant by the NC Arts Council and initially supported by the Pamlico Writer’s Group in Washington, NC in 1996.
As most often happens, editorial differences took center stage to publication reality and we broke away from the group to publish online rather than paper. We will always ALWAYS be indebted to the group for their support, particularly Jerry Cuthrell (RIP) and Harley Dartt who initiated the idea of applying for funding during the Literary round of grants from the NC Arts Council in 1996.
The Pamlico Writer’s Group meets in downtown Washington, NC and hosts a writer’s seminar each year.
Back in the day, writer’s group meetings met at Mr. Cuthrell’s office out on River Road. It was a wonderful supportive close-knit group. We’d all make copies of up to 6 pages of our work and go around the room, reading our latest words. Then the rest of the room would critique our offering. It was rural, small town south in its politeness and the kind attitude everyone had toward respecting the amount of work it takes to write as well as the amount of courage it takes to read one’s work to an audience for critique. Hats off to the Group.
It’s this small town background that fostered the kindness and cordiality of the Dead Mule’s editors when accepting or declining a piece of writing. We understand how much time it takes to write as well as how difficult it is for someone to offer up that bit of their soul to strangers to judge. Y’all are wonderful. We truly are nothing if not for our writers. Publications live and breathe by the written word and our writers amaze and confound us. Hats off to you all!
Onward and upward, back to the Mule’s history:
Then Beaufort County Arts Council, now Beaufort County Arts Council, a regional arts council, served as our fiscal agent for the original print edition. Once the edition reached paper publication/distribution stage, the Council ceased acting in that capacity as the grant money was spent and the fiscal agent/monitor role was a no longer necessary. The Mule became autonomous, so to speak in late 1996.
Since that time, the Dead Mule School of Southern Literature is paid for solely by Robert and Valerie MacEwan. Twenty-eight years of server fees, domain registration fees and more, all paid for by the MacEwan family. At one point, John Biggs, writer extraordinaire, hosted the site for free on his Big Wide Logic machine. That was a long long time ago but we’re still grateful to him.
Why “The Dead Mule”?
Flash back to 1995 as discussion of creating a literary journal ensues amongst this small group of writer friends. It seemed then that we would be a regional journal and hence Eastern NC Literary Journal seemed apropos to our mission. In 1996, Dr. Jerry Leath Mills (who eventually lived only a couple blocks away from me) gave (I believe) a copy of his soon to be published work on Equine Signifiers in Southern Literature to Harley Dartt. [the link is to revision of Dr. Mills’ original article which is published on Project Muse as The Dead Mule Rides Again. Access to the original article is on “jstor” and not readily available.] Dartt then commented on what a great name that would be for a journal and for that — we are eternally grateful. Grateful to both Jerry Mills and to Dartt for giving us the notion to coin the phrase:
“No good Southern Fiction Is Complete Without a Dead Mule”.
We’ve been here for over 30 years, quietly accepting some of the finest poetry, fiction, essays and interviews online. Occasionally we work to restore the 1990’s writing while simultaneously publishing new issues every month.
More to come… like details about how poet Helen Losse ramped up our poetry and helped us to publish poets laureates from many southern states including NC’s own Joseph Bathanti… and the unflagging support of our dear departed most beloved Phoebe Kate Foster as Fiction Editor. And the never-ending presence of Darrell Grayson’s poetry on the Mule.
Everyone is south of somewhere.
From TheDeadMule.WordPress.com website,
we reiterate the “old” about page found on that site:
*most of this information is from the very old 1990’s Dead Mule about page:
We love The South.
We appreciate all the quirks, follies, and faults that have brought the region to where it is today. If our beloved “below the Mason-Dixon Line – self” gives way to the influences of a status quo world which requires all people to be of one idea — to walk in lock-step with all others — we cease to be The South.
Simply put Let us celebrate the individual. The South revels in individuality. Freedom and the right to be southern. It’s not a curse-word, or a curse. It’s just little old us. Not one race, not one religion, and certainly not just one cause — the South contains all sides of all arguments. And lots of those sides are awful, just awful, so we don’t pay them any webspace. They’re not worth the breath it takes to dispute them.
Help the best of The South stay as is. Let the bitter past be studied –not re-lived — and let us not seek to destroy a unique culture. Remember, please, we are not simply a bunch of back-ass swamp-dwelling moonshine-drinking raccoon-hunting mother f’ers. We are arguably the last true bastion of individuality left in the US. The Dead Mule Southern Legitimacy Statement is about describing those things which are uniquely southern, wherever you are you are in some South.
The great, the bad and the ugly all come together and learn to survive right here along with the no-see ums, bullfrogs, water moccasins, tadpoles and crawdads. Embrace us. We don’t own a confederate flag and we’re considered damned liberals by our neighbors.
Enjoy every new Mule issue. And remember, the south is just a place. And everyone is south of somewhere.
We also do not publish our contributor’s bios or previous publication credits. Google does a very good job of this for us.
Copyright “Creative Commons but also, we;d like to copy Half Drunk Muse’s copyright statement because it’s a good one. Obviously we’ve inserted our name:
Submission to and acceptance by Dead Mule grants us first electronic and indefinite archive rights. All other rights revert to the author upon publication. Please credit Dead Mule as the first publisher if you reprint elsewhere; we like seeing our name in print, too.
With gratitude and affection, we give thanks to those friends who have helped and encouraged us through the years.
Helen Losse is the Mule’s amazing Poetry Editor Emeritus as you well should know. Without Helen – quite simply put – there would be no poetry section on the Mule. Her hard work and determination set the Mule apart from other literary journals as her high standards and vast knowledge assure readers the finest poetry available anywhere – online or not.
