Jessica Wimmer – If I Let My Babies Be Born
Southern Legitimacy Statement: It was probably around age seven in the middle of a winter night that I realized how southern I was while dangling my legs in Granny's outhouse.
Diane Hoover Bechtler – Illiteracy
Southern legitimacy statement
my grandmother made fat back sandwiches at lunch for all the grandchildren and our cholesterol is just fine.
Kevin Winter – What The Storm Did
Southern Legitimacy Statement: A snapshot of the South. A line of watermelons laid out in the grass. The road, just glorified gravel. My wife pointing through the windshield at the hand-painted cardboard leaning against the fence post. A smile playing across her face in the shifting sunshine. An empty gumdrop jar gleaming beside the cardboard sign. "Take a melon" on one line, "Leave a dollar" on the next.
Hannah Thurman – Snakes in the Ceiling
Southern Legitimacy Statement: When she was 8, Hannah attended a weeklong Kay Yow Lady Wolfpack basketball camp at NC State University, where dribbling was optional but prayer mandatory.
Frances Badgett – Wishbone Stick
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I grew up in Lexington, Virginia steeped in summer afternoon storytelling that winds its way late into the night. I walk 74 percent slower than most people I know here in Washington State. I'm pretty sure I'm the only person who orders grits at the diner here in town. I have that way we have that makes us really tiresome at the grocery store in places like Seattle and New York. I'm descended from Felix Grundy. I'll let you Google him.
*ValNote: I google'd him.
Rachel Kapitan — the notion …
I moved to Virginia at age seven and was baptized by vernacular when on my first day at the new school my teacher told me to do something "right quick." The whole world sounded different. Decades later, I can make fried green tomatoes without a recipe, and (not so) secretly enjoy going to the Bass Pro Shop.
Vera Tuck: Memoir and Requiem by Randall Ivey
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I'm so Southern the only other book I allow on my top booshelf besides the Bible is "Gone With The Wind".
Seeker by Cecile Dixon
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Mother, Grand-mother, Great Grand-mother, nurse, writer, chief cook and bottle washer, they are all me and they are all Southern. As the years of my self imposed Northern exile roll I by, I have come to know that Southern is who I am, no matter the location.
No Questions No Lies by Eric Boyd
SLS: Me, I grew up in Charlotte, and shortly after having my dog eaten by the people in the apartment building across the creek, was moved up to Pittsburgh by my family. Milled around for a while, then had a sabbatical from 2010-2011 which resulted in my winning the PEN American Center's Prison Writing contest. Weird how things work out. Funny in a sad way.
The Familiar by Sylvia Dodgen
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born and bred in the Alabama Wiregrass to a father, who said, “Yes, Ma’am” to every female no matter how old or young, and a mother, who painted her lips and nails red and wore heels, hose and a garter everyday of the week except Saturdays, when she rode horses with my father then she wore jodhpurs and boots. Her hair was the hardest thing she had to deal with on a daily basis. If for some reason she couldn’t make it to the beauty shop, she took meals in her bedroom, announcing that her hair looked like a “stump full of granddaddies.” She believed in benign neglect. I ran around barefoot in cutoff dungarees without a shirt. The dungaree suspenders pulled over my shoulders and hooked to metal buttons on a bib, covering my chest. I was sandy, freckled and tick-ridden.
Occasionally, daddy would bring in quail and partridge from a Saturday morning shoot. I would pick them clean on Saturday night, while my parents were dining and dancing. We’d have fried quail and grits for dinner at noon on Monday. We ate fried fish roe and grits for breakfast on Sundays and brains and eggs many weekdays. I grew up on scuppernong wine made by my granddaddy. I was a child of the 1950's and life in the Wiregrass was peaceful, pleasant and in some ways peculiar (I just didn’t know it then).
The Vehicle My Father Slept In by Jason Sobelman
SLS : I have seen a couple episodes of Lizard Lick Towing. No?
Well, I traveled across two states to hear a Southern Preacher, because that is as close as he would get to the abyss that is my current residency . God bless you Pastor David Terrell.
Thomas Scott McKenzie: Barges
An exceptional story by one of our favorite writers... so happy to have finally found this again.
Bob Thomas: Duel In the Sun
Another piece of very short fiction from yesteryear, the 1998? 1999? archives. From the notes: "Bob Thomas is the owner of Kristi's Gallery in Swansboro, N.C. After 13 years as an Executive Recruiter he decided to pursue a less stressful lifestyle and moved to the North Carolina Coast. His Gallery looks out over the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway and is an outlet for the work of over 215 Artists and Craftspeople from across the United States. Since his move to the coast he has discovered a love for writing and publishes his own in house monthly newsletter. His readers have realized that his style is not "hindered" by the rules of good grammar and that he writes mainly for his own entertainment!