Southern Legitimacy Statement: I live in a rural Virginia county where Robert E. Lee spent the night on his way to Appomattox. I make cornbread and fry okra, and live two miles from where Thomas Jefferson designed a home for a poor cousin, a younger son. I want statues removed,…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was raised in Dallas Texas but went out on my on at fourteen; joined the army at 15 and was in jail by 17. I learned a lot while in jail. I learned how to slip out of hand-cuffs and slide down a bunch of tied…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Texas born. Texas raised. Anyone not born in Texas is a Yankee in my book. I think that about covers it. Surely Not the Likeness What’s the easiest way to make a city boy holler? Turn off his air conditioner. A city boy can’t stand having his…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born in Augusta Georgia, in the same hospital where my father was born, in the same town where my father’s parents still lived, where one great grandparent still lived, and where I grew up and raised my own family. I’m still here. I lived a…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born and raised in Georgia and that’s where I’ve returned. I’ve worked at Southern newspapers. And I enjoy mater sandwiches each summer using tomatoes grown at home. Shooting Stars Preferred Mike wanted to discover a new planet or comet. Everybody was finding…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I see a funeral, a widow, her daughter, and her son telling her what uncle did to … Bunched Together I want you to consider for a moment –You walk into the Trident Health Center’s specialty clinic and smell sugar from the cakes and cookies, which, for…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: …[A]nd to further cement my southern roots, I was born in Columbia, SC, raised, largely, in Oklahoma and Texas, and lived in Tennessee and Georgia for a significant portion of my adult life. Hope my southern credentials are up to snuff! At the Edge There is an…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I attended Tulane University and lived and worked in New Orleans upon completion of my studies. From an apartment by the Fairgrounds, in the middle 1990s, I published the avant-garde literary magazine, Mystery Itch. Mentally, I never left the city. “In Old Illinois” My mother has lost…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Native of NC. Currently reside in Clemmons, NC with my lovely wife Jill. Lived and studied in Paris and Dijon for a year and a half before graduating from Wake Forest. Three novels published. The latest: A WALKING SHADOW (Unsolicited Press) 2018. Go to US Review of…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Texas is considered “the south,” right? I sure hope so… I wrote this little story on the back of high school football, the King in Texas. A football game in a small town can bring even the most divided of communities together. Some of my favorite memories…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born in Bogotá, Colombia. I lived in South Carolina for almost a decade. I earned a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of South Carolina (the original USC), before moving to Clinton, where I worked for a year. I currently live in Bogotá, but…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: It’s the language around me that reminds me that I’m in the south. My sister is always fixin’ to do or to go somewhere. She used to live down the street from the POlice Station. Hell’s Bells my mother didn’t give a hot damn what the Sam…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Last time I told ya’ll bout the tote sack my Momma made from Daddy’s bluejeans so I could pick cotton when I was six-year-old. Well, I’m gonna tell on myself a bit now – reckon the statute of limitations is run out. Me and my cousins, Michael…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I am a Mississippian, born in the Northern Hills and currently living in the flatlands of the Delta. I was fortunate enough to grow up in a rural community where I learned the value of family, faith, and food, even if I didn’t know to appreciate these…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I’m so Southern, my Ancestry profile predicted my relationship with my stepmother to be a 5th-8th cousin. Does the shared DNA make me uncomfortable? Nope. It makes me an Alabamian. Jane Day The locals of Orem Crossroads don’t need a calendar to know when July rolls around….

Southern Legitimacy Statement: When I was a kid, I told my dad, sitting it the passenger side of his rusted Ford truck, “I ain’t a Southerner.” My dad, who lived his whole life in Appalachia said, “You don’t really have a choice in that.” It took me a while to…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Sometime before 1630, Richard Willam Silvester got off a ship and set up a farm at the edge of the Dismal Swamp, He also built a house in the area around Norfolk, Virginia. About a hundred years later, Johannes Setzer left Heidelberg and ended up in Catawba…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born and raised in Vance, Alabama, once a no-name town, now home to the Mercedes plant where everyone at one time worked or longed to work. I attended the University of Alabama and now live in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. I’ve gone from living among the trees…

Southern legitimacy statement: Appalachian born and raised, I grew up in the foothills of Georgia on stories of ghosts, graveyards, and granny witches. Although I left those mountains years ago for the suburbs of Atlanta, I still hear them call to me — a reminder where I’ll always belong. The…

My Southern Legitimacy Statement is as follows: I was born and raised in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and I received my bachelor’s and master’s degrees from William Carey University. Right now, though, I am a school administrator in Bangkok, Thailand and have been in English education for 20 years. I write as…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: were I not in fact and in deed a native Southerner, I would not have cultivated my appreciation for the anachronistic, the ancient, the antique, the archaic, and the atavistic across my life and career. Although I have located to a western longitude in recent years, my…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I am a southerner by way of my husband and having lived in the small North Carolina town where he was raised for more years than I can count. Have you ever eaten Liver Mush? Add Liver Mush to your diet and you will be southern in…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I am from Virginia, lived in NYC for 25 years and North Jersey for 6, but do not like it. I miss Norfolk, which is sinking under the sea. I am as lonely as an Atlantean. Still Life I go out. I don’t remember how I got…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I am from a little place called Harts in the coalfields of southern West Virginia. In Harts, we’re taught to speak with an accent that makes even other Southerns go “Where are you from?!” These days I live in the mountains of southwestern Virginia. The Daughter I…