Greg Stidham (Dec. 2018)
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Dear Ms. MacEwan, I should not feel the need to apologize for living now in Ontario, for your name suggests first generation roots in Scotland, or at least Nova Scotia. My claim to a southern heritage comes from...
June Rogers: Sweet and Tart :: Dec. 2018
Southern Legitimacy Statement: East Texas food figures prominently in my memory of childhood where I lived in Longview (and later in Dallas and Austin): cornpone, grits, collard greens, cornpone, fried chicken, the catfish and green jello at Luby’s Cafeteria, and of...
Jim Finley: Ned the Mule :: Dec. 2018
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Born and reared in Texas, but graduate schooled three years in Starkville, Mississippi, and spent three years teaching at LSU in Lafayette, Louisiana. Lived and wed a talented and sweet Cajun in Crowley, La. With mind and soul...
Chris Espenshade : The Course of a Season (essay) Dec. 2018
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Relative to this piece, I have run throughout the Southeast, for North Forsyth high school, the University of Virginia, and Wake Forest University. I raced Peachtree back when we thought 1,200 was an astounding number of competitors. I...
Donna Walker-Nixon : Straw Man (fiction) Dec. 2018
Southern Legitimacy Statement: When I was ten, eleven, twelve years old, I dreamed of moving up North to live in a garret and write novels–never knowing exactly what I’d write about, but it would be lofty. Fifty years later, I...
Laurie Brown-Pressly : Jo’s Funeral (fiction) Dec. 2018
Southern Legitimacy Statement: My given name is Laura Ruth, and I am a sweet tea addict. I grew up in Woodruff, South Carolina–home of the Wolverines. I won a shagging contest in college at Clemson University, and, no shagging is...
Monica Bellon-Harn : Piggly Wiggly (fiction) Dec. 2018
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I spent the first seven years of my life straddling the Sabine between southwest Louisiana and southeast Texas. Even though across my life I dotted the map in Puerto Rico, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Mississippi, I kept circling...
Allison Chestnut: Queen For a Day (memoir) Dec. 2018
Southern Literacy statement: I am a spinster with a Bible and a gun who grew up reading Fannie Flagg, Jerry Clower and Lewis Grizzard. I have seen a squirrel get loose in a Baptist church. I have ridden a mule...
Geoff Balme : Quadrophenia (memoir) Dec. 2018
I’ve published with you a couple of times, but I don’t mind updating my SOUTHERN Legit statement. I identify weeds, mushrooms, trees, bugs, and wildflowers. I’m fond of dwarf irises, rue anenomes, foam flowers and, of course, hen of the...
Marijean Oldham : Airline Lost and Found (memoir) Dec. 2018
My Southern Legitimacy is in evidence when I tell you that yesterday I wore a dress and stockings to attend a ladies’ tea party where we drank champagne all afternoon. Most of the ladies are aging exotic dancers, and had...
Travis Stephens: Two Poems Dec. 2018
“12th of February, waiting on spring” February night the color of jackdaws the color of sleep under blankets the taste of dreams. Names are lost faces blurry and puffy like bad teeth in photos from another age. War again. Peace...
Robert Beveridge : Three Poems Dec. 2018
The Southern legitimacy statement: I was raised by jackalopes. Among them were Jim Boatwright, Liz Morgan, and Dabney Stuart. Floyd A pregnant spider twists on the end of her line her web breaks my cigarette’s smoke into a hundred pieces...
Con Chapman: Hard Times (fiction) Nov. 2018
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born in Missouri, a border state, the site of a skirmish in the Civil War. I was raised in a county seat with a population of around 23,000, which doesn’t necessarily sound like a small...
Poetry
Essays
