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…

My SLS: I was born and raised in Alabama by my herpetologist dad, my artist mom, and a host of relatives and babysitters. After an eight year stint in Massachusetts, the setting of this tale, I brought my Yankee husband back to Alabama where we raised our own children. Note…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Jon Sokol is a writer and a professional forester. He lives in Hartwell, Georgia with his wife, Karen, and their cat, Layla. Originally from South Carolina, Jon is a graduate of both Clemson University (BS-Forestry) and Georgia Southern (MBA) and is currently enrolled in the Etowah Valley…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I am legitimately from the South, even though people from further South may debate the legitimacy of the Tidewater area and accent. My father, like me, was raised in Virginia, and this story is a creative retelling of one of the many stories my even more Southern…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: After studying at Southern Illinois University, I left to follow all roads South and South East from Alabama to Texas, and finally, Tucson. I hang with people who believe in biscuits and gravy the way others believe in the purity of worship. Crank up the Allman Brothers,…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I’m an Appalachian woman, born and bred. I grew up in West Virginia (in a middle class, blue-collar, working-class family). My parents were not college educated but knew they wanted their children to be and stressed achievement and work-ethic to all of their children, always. I write…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I grew up in rural North Carolina. Though I drink my tea with a bit less sugar these days, the soles of my feet are still tough from going barefoot. I never sit in grass or weeds for fear of chiggers. I look strangers in the eyes…

SOUTHERN LEGITIMACY STATEMENT: I grew up crossing the Mississippi River each weekend to go four-wheeling, fishing, and running around barefoot. From Quincy, IL to Maywood, Missouri (20 short back-road minutes from Hannibal, MO, home of Mark Twain), my dad and I would return to his country roots. I’d watch dad…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I had two mules by the time I was 18 — old Jake and Sara Jane. I learn to plow the rich black dirt fields of East Texas at 14. That’s when I learned “A farting mule can’t pull and a pulling mule can’t fart”. My dad…

And here is my Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born in Jackson, TN, and grew up in Johnson City, TN, living there from the time I was two until I was twenty-four. I’ve lived in Mississippi and Georgia, but most of my adult life has been in or around Chattanooga,…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I am a Gulf-Coast Southerner, through and through. I was born in New Orleans, Louisiana. For the first half of my life, I lived in uptown until Hurricane Katrina. After swimming out of my home and all of that jazz, I moved around the country until I…