Jay Edge: Grandmother Ate Cornbread From a Glass of Milk (memoir)
Southern Legitimacy Statement: My name is Jay Edge and I’ve been drawing & writing ever since I remember. The thing I remember most as a kid in the NC piedmont was roaming the woods behind my grandparent’s home. I’d sew...
Lis Anna-Langston: The Way You Come To The Writing Life (memoir)
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Born in the South she loves writing about misfits, screw ups, outlaws and people who generally don’t fit into nicely labeled boxes. The Way You Come to the Writing Life You think it’s all about write the words,...
Alexandra Melnick: Blade Running In the South (essay)
In 1990, at a public lecture series on art in Los Angeles, three out of five leading urban planners agreed that they hoped someday L.A. would look like the film Blade Runner (1982. Beginning discussions in this essay refer to...
Blake Kilgore: Inspection (memoir)
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I grew up in several parts of the South. For starters, I was born in Big D, and then my family moved to the panhandle of Texas, where there are more oil pumps and canyons than trees. Spent...
Karl Kirkland: “Count No Count” and “No Show Jones”: The Very Best of the Southern Gothic Tradition (essay)
Southern Legitimacy Statement: (In Faulknerian style) I was born in LA (Lower Alabama) rural Escambia County, Alabama (near the state line) right above Escambia County, Florida, (who spends its whole life trying to be Escambia County, Alabama), and raised in a...
Michele Davis: You Just Never Know: The True Story of Sol Peska (essay)
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I believe that in a previous life I was from the Deep South. Not just south of the Mason-Dixon line, but as far south as you can go before wading into the Gulf. The voices in my head...
Jacquelyn L. M. Scott: Sleeping (memoir)
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born and raised in a small town in Tennessee named Jefferson City. A daughter of a self-proclaimed “Tennessee Hillbilly,” I can shoot a gun and ride a horse, all while eating cornbread soaked in milk. Sleeping...
Warren Hines: Taranaki Surf Camp (memoir)
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I grew up in a decaying town in the Mississippi Delta as an attorney’s son with riverboat captain uncles who treasure few worldly pleasures more than whiskey and a good story. Taranaki Surf Camp “Would ya’ll like to...
JoAnn Williams: White Tee Shirts (memoir)
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I am a sixth generation Texan and proud of it. I am not proud of the current set of Texas’ elected representatives. I believe anyone who does not believe that grits are a gourmet food choice has...
Chris Epenshade: Chasing the Wrong Scent (essay)
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I grew up in the North Carolina Piedmont from the seventh grade through college. I was fully immersed in classic Southern pursuits including hunting just about everything, fishing, trapping muskrats, frog-gigging, arrowhead collecting, and high-speed, dirt-road driving....
Helen Wurthmann: Forbidden (essay)
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born and raised in Missouri, whose Southern statehood led to the civil war, regardless of whether or not modern Missourians consider themselves Southerners. Missouri and I are the middle children of our respective families: often overlooked...
Joan Baker: The Burial (memoir)
Southern Legitimacy Statement: This is a story about New York Yankee children listening to their Southern parents’ same old argument about their burial sites in the South. As you say, the South has all answers to all arguments… The Burial “I...
Amanda Pugh: It’s a Southern Thing (memoir – festivals)
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...