Michele Davis: Memoir: Jan 2022
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...
Jennifer Sapio: Creative Non-Fiction: Jan 2022
Southern Legitimacy Statement: You’ll know I’m from the South when you hear my drawl, or smell my Meemaw’s peach cobbler bubbling in the oven. Born and raised in Texas, I share with all those who call these steamy lands home...
KD Smith: Creative Non-Fiction: Jan 2022
Southern Legitimacy Statement: “Stop bein’ ugly or I’ll paint your back porch red.” Jerked from the reverence of a funeral graveside prayer because the fire ants have crawled into your sandals, driving nails into your feet. Sitting on the porch...
Shelia Arnold: Memoir: Jan 2022
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I’ve lived in West Tennessee all of my life, and though I believe myself to be the most polished of my siblings, I still have quite a bit of residue on me. My six brothers and I...
Matthew Stokes: Memoir: Jan 2022
Southern Legitimacy Statement: My first cousin initially said it and has reminded me often, “You know where your roots are.” His words were in response to my living and teaching in northern China for two years. I was born in...
Howard Pearre: Memoir: Jan 2022
Southern Legitimacy Statement: You may be from around here if you’ve ever loved how cool June mornings are until about eight, but didn’t mind the afternoon heat as long as there was some shade, a breeze, and a glass of...
James Ryer: Essay: Dec 2021
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I frequently think about how the South and it’s defining characteristics, good and bad, exist in other cultures and, more recently, have reflected on that in my writing while carefully cultivating timely opportunities for drinking Coke and...
Trish Cantillon: Memoir: Dec 2021
My Southern Legitimacy Statement: Born and raised in Southern California and smart enough to marry a man from Abilene, Texas who has fostered my love of hush puppies, collard greens, and, DUH, barbecue! The Wrong Job at the Right Time...
Lauren Karcz: Memoir: Dec 2021
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I’m a lifelong Atlantan who’s been known to sit, unfazed, in my hot car in the summertime to finish listening to a song. Even in the city, the notable features of my block are two churches and...
Lee Matalone: Creative Non-Fiction: Dec 2021
Southern legitimacy statement: I’ve spent nearly my whole life in the South, though I’ve never really thought of myself as a Southerner. I studied at Thomas Jefferson’s University. Completed my graduate studies in the shadow of the chemical plants of...
D. E. Fulford: Creative Non-Fiction: Dec 2021
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Born in Missouri and transplanted to the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina before I turned two, my southern upbringing deeply influenced who I presently am (read: being the only atheist kids in the Bible Belt was quite...
Kevin R. Allison: Creative Non-Fiction: Dec 2021
Southern Legitimacy Statement: A chance meeting after a war, a love affair that lasted until their deaths… I am a half-breed: product of a woman from Acadia Parish and a teacher from way up north, nearly to Arkansas, where I...
James Roderick Burns: Creative Non-Fiction: Nov 2021
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Married to a woman from Ocilla, GA. Eat Shit, Tickfaw HE’D BEEN READY for hours – suitcases packed and arranged in the trunk; peanut butter sandwiches wrapped, coffee brewed; the girls’ belongings, not including Big Teddy, wedged...
J. D. Brooks: Creative Non-Fiction: Nov 2021
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I’m a 7th generation Georgian born in Atlanta as the 3rd great grandson of a Confederate veteran. I was the first in my line to break a 153 year old tradition of staying in the peach state....
Cecile Dixon: Memoir : Nov 2021
Southern Legitamacy Statement I was born and raised in a part of the country not thought of a typically southern. I was raised in Estill County, Kentucky, which lies beside the Kentucky River at the foothills of the rugged Appalachian...
Katy Goforth: Creative Non-Fiction: Oct 2021
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born and raised in Spartanburg, S.C. to a resilient Renaissance woman and a long-haul trucker who would talk to everyone who crossed his path about civil rights. I spent my summer days barefoot in vegetable...
James Ryer: Essay: Oct 2021
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born in the South, raised and educated there, and still choose to live there. From my beginnings and my early perception of the world as I knew it, my political perspective has continually evolved over...
Christina Rauh Fishburne: Creative Non-Fiction: Oct 2021
Southern Legitimacy Statement: My family yanked me from Virginia and took me to Alabama when I was ten. Then they left me there when I was 18. I married a boy from Birmingham after getting my MFA from University of...
Terry Barr: Essay: Oct 2021
Southern Legitimacy Statement As a native southerner and recovering Alabamian, I understand that we are definitely NOT living in a “Post-Racial” era. We have never spent enough time repairing the damage hundreds of years of slavery and discrimination have done...
Daniel Melchior Jr: Memoir: Sept 2021
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....
Ryan Vale McGonigle: Memoir: Sept. 2021
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...
Ashley Kemker: Essay: Sept. 2021
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;...
Therese Beale : Essay : August 2021
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...
Anthony Picardi : Essay : August 2021
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...
Amanda Alley: Memoir :July 2021
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...
Poetry
Essays
