Southern Legitimacy Statement: We were a prototypical southern nuclear family. My Papaw came up in the Great Smokey Mountains, near Farner, Tennessee and Cherokee, North Carolina. When he was nine, he lost track of the time one summer evening, squirrel hunting up on the mountain, and he avoided a sound…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Have long been a fan of William Faulkner‘s writing and attended the first annual Faulkner conference in Oxford at the University of Mississippi. I am pretty sure that had Faulkner spent a little more time in Italy in 1925 that he would surely have written at least…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I’m a bonafide southern fried hunting and fishing machine. I’ve gotten up before dawn and bagged an 8’ gator, went right up to dusk to put an arrow in the heart of a tusky razorback, and I’ve got a few ten pointers mounted on the basement wall….

Southern Legitimacy Statement: … grew up between the poor cotton farms and the Ozarks–both of Arkansas. She is a dog lover, tree hugger, nature activist, and defender of children and animals. 10 Step Directions to My Home Walk barefoot with a bobber-rigged cane pole down the dirt road cutting through…

Here’s my Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born in the Volunteer State, lived my first year and a half in the Magnolia State, and then moved to LA (Lower Alabama, that is). There I spent twelve formative years in a remote outpost on the fringes of the modern world where…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I trust you consider South Florida, where this piece of flash fiction is set, part of the South. I do. I am an established Cuban American writer with poetry, fiction, nonfiction and even a cookbook. Alligator Sam The lovers named the gator Sam, after Samuel Grossman who…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I used to read a lot. I am old now and write. Spittin We were standing there spittin, me-n-Tom-n Joey-n-my older brother John and other brother we were spitting at a rock. Jeez we were bored, Joey spit at the rock, a pretty good spit that missed…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I like the soft, lazy, sweet summer heat. Act One (Always) I woke up and the air seemed to be pulling away from me. My lips were dry, and my lungs were burning. The early sunlight seemed artificial, something manufactured for effect, not for nurturing the earth….

Southern Statement: I am not a native Southerner, but I can tell you that the eight years I lived in eastern North Carolina gave me what I needed to become one. Someone told me I could tell a story. Someone else put a guitar in my hand. Someone handed me…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: My later years bring me full-circle, back to near the one-stoplight East Texas town where I grew up. Farms and small communities, with their Dairy Queens, antique stores, and half- boarded-up Main Streets, seem to have a stronger literary pull than the concrete jungles of some of…

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 development and industrialized chicken farming flooding in from the north….

Southern legitimacy statement: I remember being 10-years old and sneaking out of my 15-year-old cousin’s house to “borrow” my aunt’s car for a late night feed at a White Castle in Florida. The Note Squatting over the pit in the rain you have one thought: Do. Not. Lose. Your. Balance. …

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I grew up on a farm in Virginia and, although I haven’t lived in the South since college, still hold a fondness for all things made with Duke’s Mayonnaise and anything with a little extra salt like VA Ham and Hubs Peanuts.  I also spent a summer…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I attended public schools in Selma (AL), Ocean Springs (MS), Goldsboro (NC), Niceville (FL) and Benton (AR), and I can sing all three verses of the Georgia Tech fight song even though I only lasted three quarters there. I also dated a Buck Swamp Kicking Clogger for…

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…