Southern Legitimacy Statement : Only a snow-starched Canadian would consider me, a born-Brooklynite, from the south; though my current Queens neighbors claim I have a country gait. Walleyed I spot him eyeing me, though I can’t gauge any eyes. He’s faint against the ceiling, easily mistaken for gossamer. The bathroom…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: The South is a complex kaleidoscope of contradictions that historically coexisted through compartmentalizing when ideal clashed with real. Brutality and gentility, discrimination and democracy, hospitality and race/class hostility, and more odd couples, lived and live in our kaleidoscope, which at each twist shifts the aspect created by…

SOUTHERN LEGITIMACY STATEMENT: My family moved from San Fransisco California to Orlando, Florida a year or so before I was born. They are originally from the Northeast – a mix of Canadian-Indian, French, and Mohawk/Pequot Indigenous – making me the only one of my family born in the South. I…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I come from Alaska and I married a woman from the Outer Banks. I fell in love the lifestyle, language and unique character — and charterers — in Buxton, Ocracoke, Avon and Waves. We will be retiring there and I look forward to fishing for Red Drum…

Southern Legitimacy Statement When I finally big enough to work the tobacco fields, tractors and sometimes mules pulled a long sled through the wide rows that were placed every sixth row. Sled rows were wider than the rows we moved down, bent at the waist, gathering the bottom three leaves…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was raised in a mill village in North Carolina. My parents worked at the Burlington Cotton Mill. Every spring a leathery old black man drove up to our mill house on a buckboard, unhitched a mule and used him to plow a garden space about half…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Heck, eighteen years in Charleston, eighteen more in Charlotte. If I’m not legit by now when will I be? Gators in the pond, hurricanes whirling up and down the coast–I’ve run from them and most times got away. Sweat dripping down my face, shirt stuck to my…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Ever since my mother died in North Carolina, I’ve felt an affinity for that state. Maybe one day I’ll wind up living there. Or dying there. Love Me Tender Coming Right Up “I’m the pretty sister with the curly hair,” I say, twirling my dark, curly hair….

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I am a Buxton landowner living in the frozen north. My wife grew up on the Outer Banks and we expect to retire there. Many of my mystery short stories take place on the Outer Banks and my latest novel, THE MATTER OF THE DEMATERIALIZING ARMORED CAR,…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I have been published in North and South Caroline, baby-sat three grandchildren there, trained at Fort Devens, MA with Tennessee’s 278th Infantry activated for the Korean campaign, played as one of two Northerners on their undefeated football team 1950, and one son living in NC gave his car…

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 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. How Many Dead People Does It Take…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born in Bogotá, Colombia. I have been living in South Carolina since 2010. I currently work at Presbyterian College, in Clinton. Before that, I lived in Columbia for eight years. I received a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of South Carolina (the original…

My Southern Legitimacy Statement is that my work has appeared here before, and I have read in NC, vacationed in NC, have baby-sat in NC and will visit there again to see three of my ten grandchildren. My military training was with Tennessee’s 278th Infantry Brigade at Fort Devens, MA,…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: The South is a place where past meets present, where ghosts of things long gone seem, at times, to be more real than the person standing beside you. It’s a place of memory and escape, a place of pain and hope, joy and deliverance, and ultimately a…

This report was written by a particularly astute carpenter ant named Cindi camponotus. I let her use my computer at night in exchange for the promise that she and her 200,000 sisters will not eat my house. Cindi can push down one key at a time, but not while also…

Southern Legitimacy Vital Statistics of Rhys Beleu Born: rural Texas Raised: Rich White Trash Religion: heathen Favorite Flags: Lone Star, Stars and Bars, Battle of Gonzales cannon “Come and take it” Principles to live by: 1. Never trust the government. 2. Cooking is a competitive sport. Never sacrifice taste for…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I once moved to Nebraska. This after 28 years of legitimate southern living in upstate South Carolina. For two cold hard Midwestern years, I shivered inside a corn farmer’s coat and dreamt of the day I’d come back South. Praise God: I don’t need to dream anymore….

Southern Legitimacy Statement:  Born in Dallas and raised in the Piney Woods of East Texas, I now reside on the coast of South Texas. My family traces their roots all the way to the founding of a county in Texas. Before that they came from the Duck River in Tennessee…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Stephen Hundley was raised on the Lincoln River, south of Savannah, Georgia. When the weather was right, you might have found him in a clawfoot tub on the porch. When the game warden wasn’t around, you might have found an alligator in the tub too. Stephen’s love…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: East Texas food figures prominently in my memory of childhood where I lived in Longview (and later in Dallas and Austin): cornpone, grits, collard greens, cornpone, fried chicken, the catfish and green jello at Luby’s Cafeteria, and of course the sweets like pralines and molasses candies. It’s no…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Born and reared in Texas, but graduate schooled three years in Starkville, Mississippi, and spent three years teaching at LSU in Lafayette, Louisiana. Lived and wed a talented and sweet Cajun in Crowley, La. With mind and soul embedded in southern literature, my heart is Southern. Ned the…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Relative to this piece, I have run throughout the Southeast, for North Forsyth high school, the University of Virginia, and Wake Forest University. I raced Peachtree back when we thought 1,200 was an astounding number of competitors. I once placed second at the Tuckasegee River and Road Race,…

Southern Legitimacy Statement:  When I was ten, eleven, twelve years old, I dreamed of moving up North to live in a garret and write novels–never knowing exactly what I’d write about, but it would be lofty. Fifty years later, I still live in the South, and I write about the…