Dan Russell :: Red Sky Morning ::
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I used to race against chickens in the backyard after my Papaw lopped their heads off. I also once inadvertently bought a goat at the sale barn. Red Sky Morning I didn’t sleep well. All night long,...
James Ryer :: Sweet Home Alabama ::
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was raised during the late 1940s to the early 1960s in Central Florida, not usually considered a Deep South state, but still not without some of the South’s more defining aspects at the time such as...
Ian Mueller :: Unseeing ::
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Yeah, I was born in St. Louis, Missouri, but I moved to Charlotte, North Carolina, when I was four. My Midwestern cousins used to tease me about my Southern accent but then I made them listen to...
Susan Mannix :: The Nun’s Lounge ::
Southern Legitimacy Statement: The most legit thing I can say is I’m not originally from the south and don’t pretend to be. I’ve lived [barely] below the Mason-Dixon Line most of my adult life and this is now home. My...
Gary Phillips :: Mule and Garden Days Be Praised ::
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I’m a 69-year old writer who remembers when he was a 13-year old writer, as Octavia Butler was wont to say. Tossed between the Cherokee foothills of South Carolina (my father’s people) and the high mountains near...
Katy Goforth :: All Women Marry Down and Other Fatherly Advice ::
Southern Legitimacy Statement Drinking out of an outdoor hose and running to the house in time to catch the opening song to my mama’s stories sums up my childhood. My roots are in South Carolina, but since meeting my spouse...
S. C. Davis :: The Infinite Wisdom of Moss ::
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I’ve lived in Walker County, Alabama my entire life. Our main exports are coal, tornadoes, and The Old Testament. I’ve seen ghosts in barbecue restaurants and preachers in strip joints. I own a painting which depicts Bear...
Paul Colby :: Declaration of Independence ::
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I’ve lived in the former confederacy most of my life. I was born in Texas, grew up in Virginia, and now live on a two-acre spread in Wake County, North Carolina, half-covered in pine trees and bordered...
Jan Jolly :: The Tofurkey Type ::
My Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born in the Landmark community in Arkansas (not big enough to be called a “town,” mind you) down the road from Singley Dairy. When we had to move to town, my mother tried to...
Malcolm Glass :: The Panties ::
Southern Legitimacy Statement: As I previously done said last time I submitted, I grew up in Florida. And that certainly doesn’t count. Surrounded by rich Yankees for twenty-some-odd years, I had no idea what the South was about. But I...
Trevor Lancon :: They Shall Take Up Serpents ::
Southern Legitimacy Statement: One time in Chicago I had to ask some teenager working in a booth at a parking garage whether I could get back in with my ticket if I left. He didn’t even look up from his...
Patrick Key :: Lucid Memories ::
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born in California, but I moved to Louisiana when I was four and grew up in one of the few dry parishes in the state. Two of my first legitimate jobs were cutting grass and...
Hendrik Kühn :: Last Talk About AI ::
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I’m localized in the north, always was, born and shaped by it, but I drift south. It should come as no surprise that my wife is from South America. Nor that we lived for years in Rio...
Mia Eaker :: Jack Was in Atlanta ::
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born and raised in Pumpkin Center aka Punkin’ Center, North Carolina. I’ve drank moonshine, gathered fresh eggs, fallen into cow manure, and been shocked by an electric fence. Cornbread and story-telling were staples around our...
Steven Lohse :: Temporary Accommodations ::
My Southern Legitimacy Statement: On my mother’s side, the Wilson family helped found the Presbyterian Church in South Carolina. Our holiday salad is made of iceberg lettuce, Miracle Whip, pineapple rings, and a maraschino cherry. My father was born in...
Eddie Black :: Healing Comes to Morewell Elsewhere ::
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I come from a place where you save leftover fat in a coffee can for biscuits or eggs or a gravy base. I come from a place where men go from one mother to another right after...
Devin Jacobsen :: Evil in the Object ::
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Was born and grew up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. So my hands still deliciously smart from years of attending crawfish boils. Evil in the Object For a while I thought love meant the same thing as doing...
Juan Cruz :: Open All Night ::
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...
Andrew Brasfield :: Green Top ::
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I live just outside of Birmingham, Alabama, across the creek from where I grew up. Despite spending eighteen years yelling “War Eagle” like my uncle and grandfather, I ended up at the University of Alabama. While attending the...
James Emery :: Yellow Sodbuster::
Southern Legitimacy Statement: My South is dichotomy and contradiction. Trailers to million dollar homes. Homemade apple wine from Mason jars to bottles of bourbon from a call list. Dumplins and banana pudding to grilled triggerfish and cherry clafoutis. A violent...
Lisa Briley :: Healer ::
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Born in Texas and raised in Mississippi, I spent my childhood hunting lotus and chasing fireflies. Though I moved around in my twenties, the South is in my blood and where I belong. Healer They say the...
Epiphany Ferrell :: The Amazing Chicken Man
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I live in Southern Illinois, emphasis on Southern. North of us is “downstate,” and sometimes they like to say they are Southern Illinois but they ain’t. Southern Illinois – especially the “Southern Seven,” meaning the southernmost seven...
Lee Ann Sontheimer Murphy :: Home Again
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I am Southern by nature as well as birth. I like my tea sweet, spring finds me digging in the dirt to plant flowers and vegetable. I eat my okra fried and on Sundays you’ll find me...
“Our Nativity – 1970” by Dawn Wilson
(From the 2013 December issue of the Dead Mule. Truly a classic.) We had to borrow a baby. That was the least of our troubles. There were half a dozen teen mothers in the parish who were more than glad...
Benjamin Scott: Travis, the First
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born in Dallas to a father from Hopkins County, Texas and a mother from Ashley County, Arkansas. I come from a long and proud line of dairy farmers, oil drillers, coal miners, and truck drivers....
Poetry
Essays
