Rebecca Band :: Making Light of a Thing ::
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Driving south down 17, I know when I’m finally home. The distinctive smell that continues to get stronger. It can be overwhelming, and certainly repulsive to some at first, but over time it becomes an oddly welcoming...
James Ryer :: Sweet Home Alabama ::
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was raised during the late 1940s to the early 1960s in Central Florida, not usually considered a Deep South state, but still not without some of the South’s more defining aspects at the time such as...
Ian Mueller :: Unseeing ::
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Yeah, I was born in St. Louis, Missouri, but I moved to Charlotte, North Carolina, when I was four. My Midwestern cousins used to tease me about my Southern accent but then I made them listen to...
Susan Mannix :: The Nun’s Lounge ::
Southern Legitimacy Statement: The most legit thing I can say is I’m not originally from the south and don’t pretend to be. I’ve lived [barely] below the Mason-Dixon Line most of my adult life and this is now home. My...
Gary Phillips :: Mule and Garden Days Be Praised ::
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I’m a 69-year old writer who remembers when he was a 13-year old writer, as Octavia Butler was wont to say. Tossed between the Cherokee foothills of South Carolina (my father’s people) and the high mountains near...
Melissa A. Morgan :: Fine Folks ::
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was raised south of the Mason-Dixon line and east of the Mississippi River. I was raised on yes, ma’am and no, sir. I was raised on lightening bugs and white lightning. I was raised on grits...
Basil McQuade :: Telling Stories/Immaculate Sadness ::
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I’m southern in the stepson way. I glean from trips and family and stories– and I understand the pieces, if not the whole picture. I know just enough about anything to be seemingly proficient in conversation. It’s...
Florence Nash :: Vidalias ::
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born and raised in an Eastern North Carolina tobacco town with 6 stoplights and a lot more churches and a whole lot more kin, if you go by the generous Southern interpretation of the term....
Karen Lozinski :: Directions Defy Horizons ::
Here’s my Southern Legitimacy Statement: Is geographic location enough in this instance…? I guess for me, it’s going to have to suffice. I’m from generations of hardcore New Yorkers. The city of my birth, most of my education, and my...
Karsen Thompson :: The Fracture of My Shadow ::
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I hope this story touches you guys just like it did with me as I wrote it down in my grandmother’s old rustic house in Georgia’s humid state. I remember crying and eating her delicious sweet potato...
Poetry
Essays
