Category: Fiction

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I’ve known hidden creeks, deep fishing pools and smooth stones under my wet feet. I’ve fallen asleep while watching the morning sun rise only to wake up to watch it set over pine-swollen mountains. Ash In the...

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I’m new to the south. I like it here, but I feel like everywhere I go I’m ‘appraised.’ It’s interesting. When I was at Cornell in CNY, and someone from NC passed by, I didn’t think: Huh,...

Southern Legitimacy Statement I grew up chasing off guinea fowls and picking wild strawberries from the backyard. Cupping lightning bugs in my palm, eating pinto beans and cornbread, and licking honeysuckles in my bare feet. Calling and being called “honey,...

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I attended East Carolina U., Virginia Tech., and NC State U. In 1976, I married a wonderful guy from North Carolina, and we have lived in North Carolina ever since. Once I could pronounce “y’all” as a...

SOUTHERN LEGITIMACY STATEMENT I’ve lived in Louisiana for a handful of years, and I’m now working on a PhD in English (Rhetoric and Composition) at LSU. In my time here, I’ve tried many different gas stations’ boudin (they always have...

Southern Literary Statement: I was born in South Georgia and grew up in North Florida twenty miles from the Georgia State Line. My childhood revolved around church twice on Sundays and a prayer meeting on Wednesday nights. We’d make a...

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Adrienne Burris grew up in the purple shag-carpeted room her mother grew up in, the third bedroom of a small brick ranch sandwiched between a cow pasture and a tobacco farm. Her grandfather picked her up from high...

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Mark Currey is a singer-songwriter whose roots run through Ft. Worth, Texas and the deep pine forests of southeast Arkansas. Inspired by roots rock, classic country and Americana music as well as southern gothic literature, Mark is...

My Southern Legitimacy Statement: My Southern Legitimacy starts with the breath, the first time I inhaled Faulkner and Tennessee Williams—the rhythms and sounds of their language sliding under my skin, pulsating through my veins. It’s amplified when I pick up...

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. Divinity We’re up with the birds, the...

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I’m full up with Southern. Grew up in Arkansas, right on the Oklahoma border, lived in South Carolina, North Carolina and now here in the Dismal Swamp. I may change the names to protect the folks whose...