Juan Cruz: A Morning in Soda City
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born in Bogotá, Colombia. I have been living in Columbia, South Carolina, since 2010. I currently work at the University of South Carolina, where I am completing a PhD in Comparative Literature. I prefer not...
James Vachowski: The Wal-Mart Diaries (Fiction)
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Carpetbagger by birth, South Carolinian by the grace of marriage. White-collar professional with lofty career aspirations of the traveling carnival circuit, ideally a leadership role with the midway sales division. Southern is as Southern does. The Wal-Mart...
Hank Morgan: Hunt of the Monarch (Fiction)
Southern Legitimacy Statement: ‘I write stories found between the crevices of bark on the Treaty Oak, and other natural monoliths populating the Canaan of the South’ Hunt of the Monarch Morning had eaten me whole. On the ground, a pupa...
Richard Horton: Suppose (Fiction)
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born and grew up in Rural Texarkana, TX. There were cows, pigs, hound dogs, an old swimmin’ hole and a little church in the wildwoods. There was a shabby “mansion” in town; at least it...
Claire Fullerton: Shake (Fiction)
Claire Fullerton hails from Memphis and has the accent to prove it. She loves Al Green, Big Star, Dixie Carter, and is the biggest fan of Beale Street’s radio station, WEGR Rock-103, and its infamous DJ, Kelly Cruise. Shake The...
Jessica Simpkiss: Moon’s Truth ( short fiction)
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Despite being born in Sin City, I was raised on I-95, traveling and living in all the states between the Mason Dixon Line and the Florida Everglades, always finding home in a North Carolinian sleepy, coastal town....
Brittny Meredith: The Ladies of Lazarus
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Twenty miles north of the New Madrid Faultline surrounded by cotton fields– or land that used to be cotton fields but is now filled with manufactured homes, sits the town of Sikeston, Missouri–or, if you are over...
Donna Walker-Nixon: Daddy’s Legacy (fiction)
Southern Legitimacy Statement: My daddy was a good man, who asked for little or no praise. He worked hard to provide for my sisters and me, and this prose piece shows the sacrifices of men who long for the country can...
Matt Starr: Carthage (fiction)
Southern Legitimacy Statement: They say write what you know, so I write about the South. I’m a product of North Carolina; the son of a mill worker; a small town specialist; a disciple of McCarthy and Faulkner; a kid from...
John Oliver Hodges: Alive In The Jungle (fiction)
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I am a Florida boy currently alive in New Jersey, where people ask me every day, “Where you from?” I say, “Flahda,” and they laugh and giggle and tell me how much they love my accent. Just yesterday...
Randall Ivey: Mae Ola: A Remonstrance (fiction)
As for a Southern legitimacy statement, I sometimes have to stop myself from referring to Virginians as Yankees. Mae Ola: A Remonstrance You just love to worry, don’t you? Wallow in worrying, I say. I never seen nobody study worrying...
Patrick Brady: Most of the Time I Feel All Right (fiction)
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I thought New Orleans pretty exotic for the fifteen years I scrambled after a living there. Now that I live in Lafayette, in the heart of Acadiana, I see where the Big Easy gets her best material....
Aryan Bollinger: Folks Below (fiction)
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born in the foothills of North Carolina, and Lord willing, that’s where I’ll be buried. Grampa Grover had a chestnut tree on one of those hills, each tasty morsel encased in an urchin-like shell. I was...