Southern Legitimacy Statement: My grandmother raised me on cornbread and southern stories, the anecdotes of her girlhood among the cotton rows. The Wool-Gatherer I buy the strawberries grown and shipped from Watsonville because my grandmother’s hands once picked them there. Nestled safely in the center most part of California, this…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: My southern heritage includes being born in Guntersville, AL and currently working/residing in Auburn, AL (since 2011). What Remains Home, a space both real and imagined. You can quantify it – measure it in square feet, pace its dimly lit halls, wrap your fingers around its golden doorknobs,…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born and raised in Missouri and now live (very, very) close to Atlanta. With the exception of college, I have spent my entire life in the South. I most certainly do not miss the snow, or the cold. To Tell or Not to Tell After…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: There’s nothing dirty in that dictum, “Pinch the tail and suck the head.” Like other South Louisiana creatures, I’ve got a hard exoskeleton and a spicy interior that—although it takes some elbow grease to access—will leave you licking your lips and slappin’ ya mama. The Boot at the…

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…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I have lived all over the hill country in Texas and am from New Orleans, LA so most of my work is about these environments and the characters I’ve encountered there. Pipe Creek, Texas Dust flew behind the pickup truck like a cape in the wind. Noses…

Southern Legitimacy Statement:  “The navigator tells his story and the explorer his, and the historian, and the planter, the naturalist, the pilot and the soldier. The river is in all of them. But if you try to use them piecemeal, you find a patternless puzzle.” -Hodding Carter The West Yellowstone…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Southern Legitimacy Statement: When I tell people where I’m from, I have to make sure I pronounce New Orleans in a way they will understand it, not the way I really say it. I live in Idaho now and run a rehab after years of drug addiction and…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: My name is Scarlett. I was born in California , but my family moved us at an early age. I have lived in North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Virginia, but I proudly grew up in south Louisiana in Cajun country. I currently live in New York, but…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Let’s get something straight, right off. I don’t drink sweet tea. I’ve been dieting my entire life. What would be the point? I can’t stand grits. I have issues with lots of “white” foods including mayonnaise, Duke’s or any other. I’m not a Southern Baptist. In fact,…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born and raised in Missouri and now live (very, very) close to Atlanta. With the exception of college, I have spent my entire life in the South. I most certainly do not miss the snow, or the cold. Mrs. Zeeman In September of 1977, the…

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…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: While standing up in a rowboat, I slapped six-foot alligator gars on the head with my oar, walked over a rattlesnake so sound asleep in the sun that it didn’t wake up, turned over rocks to see if I could find that black spider my Gramp warned me…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: My Southern Legitimacy is in evidence when I tell you that yesterday I wore a dress and stockings to attend a ladies’ tea party where we drank champagne all afternoon. Most of the ladies are aging exotic dancers, and had the shoes to prove it. It was delightful….

Southern Legitimacy Statement: David Tromblay lived in a single wide trailer on a piece of leased land somewhere on the Fond du Lac Reservation until his parents split up. Before earning a BA in English and Writing from UW-Superior, he served in the U.S. Armed Forces for ten years, deploying to…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born and raised in Texas. Some people try to say Texas is more Southwest than South. Truth is, we have our own peculiar ways, like every state. My ggg-grandfather was hanged by the Confederates for being a Yankee sympathizer in Gainesville, TX during the Civil…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Growing up in the South, I developed a love for stories. Some of these included the travel accounts of my cousins in the military, and the gossip of girls as we worked alongside the women ‘barning tobacco’ in central North Carolina. Starting in fifth grade, I took…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: My husband, a fellow aspiring writer, and I married in May and live a quit life in a single-wide in the woods. I was born and raised in a small Arkansas community, without a Dollar General or Sonic to be considered a town. I’ve always lived 20 minutes…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: William C. Crawford is a writer and photographer based in Winston-Salem, NC. He has lived in North Carolina since 1962. He was a combat photojournalist in Vietnam. That led him into social work where he often became a voice for the powerless in the Tar Heel State. Down…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I grew up in Columbia South Carolina where I spent my summers at Lake Wateree swimming with the Cottonmouths. I attended the College of Charleston in Charleston, South Carolina where I would swim the beaches of Sullivan’s Island and Folly Beach and once punched a baby Sand Shark…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: My name is Jay Edge and I’ve been drawing & writing ever since I remember. The one thing I remember doing before drawing and telling stories was roaming the woods behind my grandparent’s home. I’d sew a sheath for my rusty machete, head out the back door to…

My Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. The home of the mighty Crimson Tide of football lore. My mother made sure I was born in the South and growing up my grandmother would call me her little “Alabama Belle”. Opportunities It was a beautiful sunshiny day.  And…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was raised in South Carolina. I make the best slow cook grits with Daufuskie Shrimp and I know football to be the best game ever created by man. I Grew Up I grew up in South Carolina catching crawdads in the creek in the backyard, and watching…

Southern Legitimacy Statement:  Born in Maine but raised in Water Valley, Mississippi, the deep south is the only place I’ll ever understand, and I still don’t know the first thing about it. “Stairways” I take the elevator to the funeral instead of the stairs, which is pretty unusual for me….