Southern Legitimacy Statement: I grew up in the Ohio River Valley, more specifically Southern Indiana, the South of the Midwest. My town bordered Kentucky so we argued about Hoosier and Bluegrass basketball while eating brain sandwiches, a regional deep-fried treat. We also ate vegetarian meals such as corn on the…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Born and raised in North Carolina to parents graciously welcomed by the South, I have a strange kind of Southern legitimacy. My roots and birth certificate proclaim me as native, but my family’s heritage says otherwise. This reality is one that I can never seem to outrun….

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born in the North, to two Southern parents, finally returning to the South, to the peninsula inhabited for several centuries by my mother’s people in my tenth year. My hands have quick caught green anoles; felt the mix of sandy black soil under my running…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: After growing up in the Old Dominion, a creeping dissonance and yearning for a different world led me to leave. Though I’ve happily rebadged myself from Virginian to Pacific Northwesterner, I still have a hankering for warm ocean waves, fireflies, and decent hushpuppies. Virginia with all its…

My southern legitimacy Statement: I moved to a small farm on Virginia’s Eastern Shore in 2004 on which I put a conservation easement. The community of woods, pond, fields and salt marsh will be forever protected from the ravages of development and industrialized chicken farming flooding in from the north….

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born in Florida but travelled the Southern U.S. quite extensively as a child before my family settled down in Kentucky at age 11. I have deep family roots from the hills of Kentucky to the sugar sands of Florida and everywhere in between. Orange Juice…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I am a southern transplant, having lived in the south for over 16 years after relocating from Southern California at 19 years old. I found my heart in the small, coastal city of Virginia Beach and now, live in Orlando. Wasteland The digital clock in my parent’s…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: There’s nothing that steeps a Southerner in their own Southerness quite like living outside of the South. Having grown up in Memphis, I now live in Southern California, where, every day, it seems, I have to explain my Delta accent. I hold fiercely to my Southerness as…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: My parents grew up West Virginia hillbillies, but moved to Pennsylvania (for my dad’s job), where I was born. In North Carolina since age six, for sixty years now, I’ve hailed from the South—North Carolina, Georgia, and currently, Tennessee. When I first came south, I never expected…

Southern Legitimacy Statement : Southern Legitimacy Statement: Though born and raised in Toledo, Ohio, where I started my writing career for a small music magazine, I have lived in rural Virginia with my husband and two children for the last four years. It’s now my home, and my favorite place…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Like many southerners, my mother grew up on a farm and canned a lot of food. Unfortunately aluminum pressure cookers were used on their farm and they canned tomatoes which are acidic. This lead to my mother having aluminum dementia as mentioned in the story. A Fond…

Southern Legitimacy Statement I’m in the north of Feria, a village in the foothills of the Sierra Morena. It’s the last street before the hill rises up to the castle… but, hey!!! It’s not all going north. I’m in the south of the province of Extremadura, and Extremadura is in…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: My people settled the Territory South of the River Ohio, which later took the name ‘Tennessee.’ (Before they were Tennesseans, they were North Carolinians and Virginians.) I can whittle in a tilted-back chair on the front porch, use a tissue-paper comb to keep a tune, and make…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born north of the Mason-Dixon line, but with a Southern spirit. Now I’m happily settled where Southern red cedar bedecked in Spanish moss shares the landscape with live oaks and cabbage palms—Florida,the land of flowers, where it’s harder to stop something from growing than to…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I grew up in New York with dyed-in-the wool Southern parents. They arrived in the city during The Depression determined “to make it,” as my father said, and they did. But they brought along with them the unwritten Southern rulebook of “shoulds” and expectations, which I called…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Proud as a peacock to be truly southern. Born below the gnat line in middle Georgia. Lived in Hot Atlanta a few years, then raised a bunch youngins within a view of the north Georgia mountains. Currently spreading my feathers in the humid swamps of north-central Florida….

This month features poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction, essays, memoirs and more writing goodness than you can shake a stick at. My dad used to say that– “more than you can shake a stick at” — I wonder if that’s a common phrase. Bob was born in 1915 and I find…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I’ve lived all of my life south of the Mason-Dixon Line. I come from Bandy, which is located in southwest Virginia. I was six when my family moved to Hampton Roads. My dad escaped a life in the coal mines to work as a pipefitter at the…

My Southern Legitimacy originates with water. In 1963, my father decided to take the family South not West because the water in LA upset his digestion. My eldest sister always regretted the choice but I revealed growing up on the coast of central Florida. I loved wandering through the palmetto…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I grew up south of the airport. It wasn’t something I led with back then. Taking the bus into town was like traveling to another, more deliberate country. Truth is, pretty much everyone here talks true north, but chooses to live hugging the US/Canada border. A national…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born into the same economic class as Job’s turkey in eastern Tennessee, and grew up into a neighborhood of lowlifes, wastrels, and questionable IQs. I managed to get myself educated and to a certain extent, literate. I teach and write in the Smokies. Tippycanoe: Swamped…

SOUTHERN LEGITIMACY STATEMENT I’ve lived in Louisiana for a handful of years, and I’m now working on a PhD in Rhetoric and Composition at LSU. In my time here, I’ve tried many different gas stations’ boudin (they always have the BEST boudin. My favorite: Nonc Kev’s in Rayne); done too…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born in Norfolk, Virginia and grew up in nearby Virginia Beach. Spent lots of time in Gloucester VA where my mom grew up. Summers almost always involved a two-week trip to the Blue Ridge. If you want to go further back, I recently traced a…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born in Mobile, Ala., to parents whose ancestors lived throughout the southern parts of Alabama. My parents’ divorce eventually migrated me to the most Southern place on Earth, the Mississippi Delta. I was raised in the Delta, went to college at Southern Miss in Hattiesburg,…