Category: Fiction

Southern Legitimacy Statement: My friend Sam told if I’m tellin the truth I can wander around a little but if I’m puttin out a stretcher I better stick to the straight and narrow and repeat it exact. So I’m stickin...

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born in the stench of the Gulf Coast refineries, raised in trailerhomes and white trash apartment complexes. My daddy got the calling to be a preacher but my momma didn’t get the calling to be...

Southern Legitimacy Statement: My grandfather spent his twilight years drinking cognac and reliving the War. Initially Papa Jules had been assigned submarine duty. He was transferred to a desk job in Brussels after his submarine commander realized Papa spoke a...

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Dawn Corrigan lives in the Congressional district of Matt Gaetz. Help us, Obi-Wan Kenobi. Tomato Soup It arrived in May. Faye had tried to get some in April, but she’d lingered so long over the details of...

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born in Illinois against my will and fled that state for a better future in Texas. When family ask if I’ll ever return there, I can’t stop laughing at them, not with them. Why would...

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Born and grew up in Mink Shoals, West Virginia. I love being in places with neat town names not found in the L.A. Times—most recently: Big Stick, Blue Jay 6, and Odd. Brown beans and cornbread might...

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I am legitimately southern. Both sides of my family go back many generations in North Carolina. I live (and write) in Wilmington. Broken “It’s broken,” Mama said, as though Jim couldn’t see the handlebars for himself. “I...

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Sunday mornings at our house it’s grits, red eye gravy, country ham, eggs over easy and buttermilk biscuits. (Please don’t tell my doctor.) I’ve walked 3 miles to a one room schoolhouse taught by an 18-year old...

I have a Master of Arts in Teaching from Lee University which is in Cleveland, TN, to establish my Southern Legitimacy… to further cement my southern roots, I was born in Columbia, SC, raised, largely, in Oklahoma and Texas, and...

Southern Legitimacy Statement: A graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill, I am a native Atlantan born to a father also raised in Atlanta and a mother from small-town northern Florida. I spent many childhood summer days either swimming in a black water...

Southern Legitimacy Statement: My grandfather gave me my first chew of tobacco around the age of five, and I started hunting with a shotgun when I was eight. As for my interest in the Southern aesthetic, well, that probably began...

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born and have lived in the South when it was segregated, have seen the changes forged through the efforts of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, have witnessed the flare...

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I’m Southern California, born and raised, (learned to surf in high school P.E.). But my Dad’s parents came from big families in Oklahoma, leaving behind more relatives than he can count. My statement feels like a family...

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Born and bred in Texas. If you see a guy trying not to lose his balance while walking across the cobblestone streets of Philadelphia in his cowboy boots, that would be me. The Oldest Barber in Texas...

SOUTHERN LEGITIMACY STATEMENT When we unexpectedly showed up at Grandma’s house on any given Sunday, she would send one of my older brothers into the yard to catch a chicken or two. She was quicker and more efficient at wringing...

SOUTHERN LEGITIMACY STATEMENT When we unexpectedly showed up at Grandma’s house on any given Sunday, she would send one of my older brothers into the yard to catch a chicken or two. She was quicker and more efficient at wringing...

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I am a double immigrant from Italy and Venezuela who became a Texan 25 years ago. On top of that, I am a first-generation college graduate who received a master’s degree in Journalism from the University of...

SOUTHERN LEGITIMACY STATEMENT: Mississippi birthed me skinny, Louisiana fattened me up, Georgia married me off, Tennessee worked me like a borrowed mule and Florida retired me. My favorite quote is from Confederates in the Attic by Tony Horwitz. ” The...

My Southern Legitimacy Statement: We lived up in a holler outside Waynesboro, Tennessee. My dad was a master sergeant in Korea, at 23 years old. They killed everyone else, except Private Simmons, so they put my dad in charge. We...

Southern Legitimacy Statement: As a student at one of the South’s finest public universities, I rediscovered my childhood penchant for long conversations, piping hot, locally roasted coffee, and kind souls who always have enough time for tradition. The public transportation...

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Erik Peters is a teacher with a love of the American south. Whether it is southern comfort -of either the welcoming kind or the sort which warms your throat around a campfire- or country music, the south’s...