John Brewer: The Sounds of the South (fiction)
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I am a child of rural Texas. The southern part not the Western part. I was raised by an Alabama born grandmother. As such I believe bacon brings us closer to God and that corn bread is staple...
Aimee Keeble: No Ode to Oxy (essay)
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I live in North Carolina. This area of America has been savaged by Oxycontin or as they call it around here ‘hillbilly heroin.’ I’ve met a lot of people who have been affected by the drug; this is...
Nancy Hartney: Three Poems
Southern Legitimacy Statement: My family and I come from Georgia, and while they have mostly died off or moved further south, I still say I hail from Atlanta. Great-great grandfather wore grey and fought in The War while my granddaddy was...
Jessica Simpkiss: A dance with the devil when the music won’t stop (flash fiction)
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Despite being born in Sin City, I was raised on I-95, traveling and living in all the states between the Mason Dixon Line and the Florida Everglades, always finding home in a North Carolinian sleepy, coastal town. A...
L.B. Sedlacek: The Care and Feeding of Cemeteries (fiction)
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I grew up in western North Carolina and that’s still where I live now under the shadows of the nearby Blue Ridge Mountains. Except for a stint in Washington DC (which is still pretty close to the...
Julia Hogan: Jump School (short fiction)
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I’m writing this on my porch, in a t-shirt, in December, drinking a PBR. Jump School See, I didn’t learn how to jump out of airplanes the old fashioned way. This was before the Gulf War. I...
Rae Monroe: The Cowmilker
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born in backwoods Mississippi, and spent my youth bouncing between my homestate, Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina, and Virginia. I also spent some time in Florida, but many consider it to be a lost corner of...
Kristin Sample: Lost Raven Moms Yahoo Group (fiction)
Southern Legitimacy Statement: … a short story I wrote about Debra, her big ideas about school drop off, and the special brand of passive aggression that can only be found in Southern mom groups. The story is loosely based on an...
Sela Breen: March For My Life (memoir/essay)
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Sela wrote about herself instead of writing a SLS but we forgive her. Read the following essay and you’ll see why. “I am a ninth grade student at Mamaroneck High School. I am fourteen years old, and...
Eric Sampson: Little Pools (poem)
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I am a native Virginian who has lived in Boston and Philadelphia. I am back in Virginia and enjoy connecting with my southern roots. I write poetry, short fiction, and I act, and paint. Little Pools In your...
Barbara McLay: Five Faiths (essay)
Southern legitimacy statement: I was born and raised in Florida and am still living here, two miles from Georgia. My dad and grandparents were also native Floridians, and I can’t find a maternal or paternal ancestor who was born or lived...
Robb White: The Neurosurgeon’s Rat (fiction)
My Southern legitimacy is purely honorary (two degrees from U. of Arkansas, 1985). The Neurosurgeon’s Rat The neurosurgeon grimaced at the sight of the family clustered in the waiting room. They refused to leave the waiting room, according to the...
Tim Peeler: Résumé (fiction)
Here’s a fan favorite from Mule writer Tim Peeler. So much code to delete, it took forever to clean this one up. This came from the Wayback Machine. 1990s Classic Dead Mule School of Southern Literature. Résumé Was there snow...
Poetry
Essays
