Charles Philip Brooks : Fiction : Nov 2020
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born in North Carolina and spent more than half my life in the south – variously residing in North Carolina, Virginia, and Georgia. I admire Mark Twain for mighty specific reasons and Allan Gurganus for...
Steve Gerson : flash fiction : Nov 2020
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born in Galveston, TX, and raised in Houston after my family evacuated following Hurricane Carla. I am educated at the University of Texas, Texas State University, and Texas Tech. That’s a whole bunch of southern...
Emily Painton : Fiction : Nov 2020
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Some folks say Oklahoma is the south, I’m not so sure. I was born there and grew up there but always heard the call of those more southern states. I moved on down to Texas for a...
Travis Stephens : Fiction : Nov 2020
My Southern Legitimacy is that I used to work towboats out of exotic ports such as Fouchon and Houma. There I developed a lifelong thirst for sweet tea and gumbo done right. If that isn’t enough legitimacy, I understand. Not...
Karan Freimark : Fiction : Oct 2020
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born and raised in the South, but I’ve been around. I carry it with me everywhere. An Evening with Friends Jo-Jo shook loose tobacco onto the paper, rolled it and ran his tongue along the...
Chris Espenshade : Fiction : Oct 2020
Southern Legitimacy Statement: No need for the Confederate flag, which has spread far beyond the South as a symbol of hatred and racism. Waffle House serves as the true boundary marker for the region. Cheesy eggs, grits, raisin toast, and...
Pete Peterson : Fiction : Oct 2020
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...
Douglas Borer: Fiction : Oct 2020
Southern Legitimacy Statement On my dad’s side of the family, we arrived in North America with Winthrop’s fleet in 1630. They were a whole decade behind mom’s kinfolk, who came on the Mayflower in 1620. I can say with confidence...
Matt Stephenson : Fiction : Oct 2020
Southern Legitimacy Statement : I was born and raised in the great state of North Carolina, where I grew up in what was once a farming community. I was raised by those who grew up working in the tobacco fields...
Candice Kelsey : Fiction : Oct 2020
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I grew up miles from Kentucky, spent summers in Tennessee, and married a guy from Tennessee. I consider the South my second home. Is that legitimate enough? Oh, my daughter will be attending Ole Miss in the...
Rodney Barfield : Fiction : Oct 2020
Southern Legitimacy Statement: There used to be preachers along the North Carolina/Virginia border who ran whiskey Saturday nights and preached fire and brimstone Sunday mornings. I know. I listened to them through the windows of The Holy Way Baptist Church...
Sandra Cimadori : Flash Fiction : Oct 2020
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I ate grits for the first time when I was eighteen and a starving university student in Tallahassee, Florida. Grits filled something deep inside me as did the intoxicating perfume of a rainstorm during a summer afternoon...
Nicholas Manai : Fiction : Oct 2020
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born in the North, live in the North, but spent 4 years studying literature in Atlanta, which I’m guessing you don’t consider to be the South. This story is, however, about people who came to...
Jason Wallace : Flash Fiction : Oct 2020
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born in Hong Kong (it’s in the southern part of China). I lived in Burlington, KY for a few years. While I was coaching high school football across the river in Ohio, the coaches would...
Scott Hutchison: Flash Fiction: September 2020
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I had a northerner ask me where I was from. I replied, “I’m a Virginian.” He thought that pretty efficient: I told him where I was from and what I was in one statement. Redneck Exhumation “You...
Dave Swan : Fiction : September 2020
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Though I was born in upstate New York and grew up in Michigan, my Southern leanings began to emerge when I studied Faulkner, blues, and jazz in college. I’ve now lived for almost twenty years in the...
Eugene Platt: Poetry : August 2020
Southern Legitimacy Statement: As proclaimed in the foreword of my coming-of-age novel “Saint Andrews’ Parish”: “I count it a blessing of the first magnitude: Being born in Charleston, South Carolina, and growing up in that part of it known as...
Bruce Robinson: Three Bus : Fiction: August 2020
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Now, I’m not about to claim New Orleans as distinctly southern, and certainly not New Smyrna Beach or Key West. And I’m sceptical of all variants of y’all on the page. But look at how I spell...
Tim Hunter: Esther’s Story: Fiction: August 2020
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was raised in Georgia and came of age in Bama. Summer’s are for fishin’, fryin’ okra, and makin’ tomato sandwiches. Come winter, I’m cussin’ the cold with a glass of bourbon. My wife makes damn fine...
Edward Supranowicz : Flash Humor: July 2020
Southern Legitimacy Statement: One day while riding my motorcycle, I came upon a sign that read “site of the Mason-Dixon Line”. I looked at it for a while, then crossed to the other side, then back again, then sorta straddled...
Steve Brammell: The Fourth of July : Fiction : July 2020
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I spent a large chunk of my life in Birmingham, Alabama, working as a freelance writer for various companies, institutions, and magazines. Most of the time I was the only non-Southerner in the group, which can be...
David R. Stafford : Fiction : July 2020
Southern Legitimacy Statement: My Momma made me a sack out of a pair of my Daddy’s old blue jeans when I was six-year-old. What on earth for you might be asking. So I could pick cotton. If that ain’t legit...
Suzanne Cottrell : Fiction : July 2020
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I attended East Carolina U., Virginia Tech., and NC State U. I married a southern gentleman and have lived in North Carolina for over forty-three years. Once I could pronounce “y’all” as a one syllable word and...
Pamela Glazier : Flash Fiction : July 2020
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Whelp, I’ve definitely thought about the South before, and I get offended when greens aren’t cooked right, so I’m probably the most legitimately Southern person you’ve ever heard of. Apocalypse Now Until the Streetlights Come On James...
Ben Gilbert: The Other Side of Midnight : Flash Fiction : July 2020
*Southern Legitimacy Statement: To you folks, I’m not sure I’m legitimate. Read on… Ben Gilbert is founder of TheBlueSpace Guides Co-operative and a consultant to Child Space Foundation, Nepal. He lives in the United Kingdom. He is a Fellow of...