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Joseph Leverette: Memoir : January 2021
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...
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Anna Oberg: Creative Non-Fiction: Dec 2020
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...
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CL Prater: Creative Non-Fiction: Dec 2020
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...
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Leah Mueller: Creative Non-Fiction: Dec 2020
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...
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Starla Sloan: Creative Non-Fiction: Dec 2020
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...
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Philip Arnold: Essay : Nov 2020
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...
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Nicole Yurcaba : Essay : Nov 2020
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...
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Lindsay Brown : Essay : Nov 2020
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...
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Strawberry Trellis : Essay/Memoir : Nov 2020
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...
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Gretchen Day : Memoir : Nov 2020
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,...
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Mary Dansak : Memoir : Nov 2020
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...
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Jon Sokol : Essay : Oct 2020
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...
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Meredith Flory : Memoir : Oct 2020
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...
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Marlene DeVere: Memoir : Oct 2020
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...
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Shawna Green : Memoir : Oct 2020
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...
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Martha Branson : Memoir : Oct 2020
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...
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Scott Piner : Essay : Oct 2020
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...
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Robert Plumlee : Memoir : Oct 2020
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...
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Kevin Brown : Memoir : September 2020
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...
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Layne Radlauer : Essay : September 2020
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...
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R. J. Roberts : Memoir : September 2020
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I speak with a muddled southern accent. I lived in the north all my life, but my father’s family comes from the south, and on their trek north they didn’t bring money, brains, better ideas, or even...
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Eric Creech : Memoir : September 2020
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I am a Kentucky boy who is born and raised in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains that is telling a story about going to the Dollar Store. Plus Fried Taters touch my soul. A Trip to...
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Dena Pruett: Essay : September 2020
Southern Legitimacy Statement | My Dad was born at the Hotel Dieu in New Orleans, and none of his family had ever ventured far past the Mississippi River before he did. Though born in Texas, I grew up in Belle...
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Jay Waters: What We Gonna Do : Essay : August 2020
Southern Legitimacy Statement — I was born, and have lived, and have not left for more than 25 days, an area bound to the east by I-65 in Birmingham and to the west by Lurleen B. Wallace Blvd in Tuscaloosa,...
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Mike Boyette : On Hoes and Hoeing : Essay: August 2020
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was raised dirt poor on a poor dirt farm in eastern North Carolina. I have written since I was small and have always been fascinated by people’s motivations. I somehow was able to get a good...