Southern Legitimacy Statement: The South is a complicated thing for me. It’s where I was born — North Carolina, to be exact. It’s where I couldn’t wait to leave. It’s where I’ve always been. This region has beautiful places and people. But it also continues to be haunted by demons…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Richard grew up in the north, moved to Tennessee in 1992.  Later moved to the Charleston suburb of Summerville, SC where he enjoys sweet tea and grits (rhymes with “as good as it gets”).   Grave Speak “Gee Paw, mommy thinks you are getting too old to…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: If you don’t believe I’m legitimately Southern by now, Val, you ain’t right in the haidbone. Rusty Roses Mama used to say that she never had to lecture me much because I knew right from wrong. She told me that when I was about ten in the…

I am a happy Southern transplant and have lived in the beautiful state of Tennessee for six years now. I adore this place and have absolutely no plans to leave. The plates on my car and frequent use of the word “y’all” both confirm that I am firmly planted. Strike…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: My family never hid our crazy folks; they generally sat on the front porch and enjoyed the breeze just like the family who weren’t crazy. Come to think of it, we all had some crazy mixed in amongst our sanity. My mother cooked red-eye gravy every time…

Southern Legitimacy Statement : I grew up running barefoot through the Ouachita and Ozark Mountains chasing crappie by day and visiting with family on the front porch as lightning bugs lit up the night sky. I ran off with the U.S. Air Force and ended up with a law degree…

Wow! What an amazing bunch of talent we have here in Dead Mule Territory. Had over 85 entries in the Flash Fiction Competition. The fierce competition is over and we have a winner! We will publish the Winner and Five Honorable Mentions in the June 2019 Dead Mule School of…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I live in Charlotte, North Carolina with my husband and ten-year-old son. The Line The line shifts. I move quickly, bumping the woman in front of me. Sorry, I mumble. She doesn’t acknowledge me. I think about all the things I have to do. The door opens,…

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: I said comic books when I moved to Tensas Parish, Louisiana as a small kid. I said funny books when I left. I moved there during WWII from Manhattan. I remember and love St. Joe, LA. I don’t remember Manhattan. I have a sculpture show coming up…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: If you hold your fingers over the eyes of your imagination and squint real hard, you can easily mistake a dead moose for a dead mule and Newfoundland for the South. I agree with Kurt Vonnegut that our purpose in life is to fart around. Night Time…

Here’s my Southern Legitimacy Statement: Born on the Gulf Coast of Texas, I grew up in a little town—a buttermilk junction—called “La Marque,” “the mark,” by the French woman who worked at the railroad depot way back when. Raised by a Texas daddy from the east Texas town of Center…

Here’s my Southern Legitimacy Statement: At my school you could use ACC Tournament Friday as an excused absence. You just needed a note from your mom: “Please excuse Johnny from class on Friday. He was watching the basketball.” I’m also Southern enough to worry that people I know will read…

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….