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,…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Born in North Carolina, weaned on beer and oysters, Braxton Younts lived in the heart of Appalachia. After that he roamed the cold streets of America, Europe and Japan, chasing elusive dreams, writing a little, things mostly for himself, and trying to forget something very sad that…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I am originally from south Louisiana, where I grew up on the Bayou Teche. I now call eastern North Carolina home, where I live part-time on the Pamlico River. I teach at East Carolina University. I’ve written about Southern writers through most of my career, but have…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: … born and raised Floridian. The Final Girl “Come out and show yourself, Krueger!” My eyes shoot open and my heart instantly thrusts its gears to full throttle, preparing me for the unthinkable sight I’m about to witness. As I look around frantically for the source, I…

My Southern Legitimacy Statement: Like some odd hybrid, I was born in Pensacola, Florida to a New York Irish Marine pilot and his Virginia bride—but raised in Pittsburgh. Yet after six years in the Marine Corps (itself an odd hybrid—as if the urban Northeast and rural South had a baby)…

Here’s my Southern Legitimacy Statement: I lived and worked in New Orleans for five years, from 2014-2019, including stints as a semi-pro poker player, a nonprofit fundraiser, Tulane University’s debate coach, and an overnight Uber driver (some of these overlapped). Ever since, I’ve been pursuing my MFA in West Virginia,…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I have almost always lived in the South (Southern Maryland, Southern India, Southern Florida, and Southern California). Give me an afternoon under live oak trees dripping with swaying Spanish moss, sweet tea, and a good book, and I’ll be happy. Humidity? Bring it on. It’s just part…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I am as Southern as grits, biscuits, and gravy, having the double blessing of being brought into this world in the great state of Georgia (Atlanta to be precise) and having my raising in the Volunteer State of Tennessee. I have been educated here and have worked…

I know what it feels like to walk barefooted behind my daddy while he plows that red Georgia clay on a hot summer day. That fresh turned dirt was cool on my feet, and a feeling like no other for a little boy. You can’t go back in time but…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born and lived twenty years in Knoxville, Tennessee where I spent many evenings Agee-style with the saw of cicadas and the scent of hose water on hot grass. As an adolescent, there was nothing I wanted more than to leave the place for some far-flung…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I grew up in south-central South Dakota. My maternal great grandfather’s family came from Nodaway County, Missouri named after the Nodaway River that flows south. My home town is Mission, population less than a thousand, the largest city on the Rosebud Sioux Indian Reservation. I have not…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: “I am a Chicago native who lived in New Orleans for brief stints (the longest being nine months in duration) at various times during my twenties. Since I was a restless vagabond gal, I constantly moved and traveled to places where I thought I might get a…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I grew up n a small town on the Kentucky-Tennessee border where elections were determined by which politician passed out the most half-pints of liquor. When we were kids we got paid 50 cents a piece to pass out Seagram’s Seven and Coronal Lee. When we weren’t…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was raised in the foothills of North Carolina and have spent the majority of my adult life in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Watauga County, NC. This piece locates its narrative along Brushy Fork Ridge, where I built my house twenty years ago. The Tao of…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Nicole Yurcaba is a Ukrainian-American poet and essayist who teaches at Bridgewater College in Virginia. Well-Traveled It’s had a long journey, your letter. Today, it arrived nearly six weeks post-maling—at its intended destination, not to its intended person. I am not there, in Iceland. I am 4,852…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Dear editors at The Dead Mule, Have I ever told you how much I love the South? Probably not, because we’ve never met. I live all the way up here in Alberta, Canada and have so much appreciation for the Southern United States having a food background…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I have worked jobs that are always considered women’s jobs such as maid, nanny, hostess, daycare facilitator and now as a librarian. I am interested in identities in the south as well as the interconnection between landscape and identity. I live and work in Savannah, Georgia. How…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I have always lived in the South, having been raised in North Carolina, and now living south of the north pole. Tame I had already drunk a couple of beers when Theresa pointed to a sign that read, Lion Enclosure, and suggested, “Let’s go take some pictures.” We dropped…