Southern Legitimacy Statement: The simple fact of being a South Carolinian is enough to qualify me as southern, but i feel my inner southerner is a result of being a Barnet woman. A Barnet woman will rip a person to shreds with a wink and a smile. Barnet women are…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: …taught for five years at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky, the oldest college west of the Appalachians where the Deep South used to send their favorite sons. In the years he devoted to writing his award-winning novel about the civil rights movement in Mississippi, The Children Bob…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: When I was 15, I gave away one of the best shirts I’ve ever owned: black, somehow fitted to my gawky frame, with white lettering that read “I (red heart shape) the South.” I sat beside a slightly older girl in geometry who borrowed my vanilla lip…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I come from Charlotte. When I was little, we went to church at Long Creek Baptist, and I was baptized by a preacher named Kenny, all the way under the water, but just for a second, hardly long enough to think I’d died. I never really had…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born and raised in Oklahoma with sausage gravy and biscuits and grits. My paternal ancestors were removed from Georgia and Tennessee through the Trail of Tears. My family lived on their allotments in the Going Snake District in Indian Territory. My grandmother’s land was sold…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born in Vidalia, Georgia, but I now reside in Valdosta, Georgia, moving from onions into the swampy landscape to study Creative Writing at Valdosta State University. Though my accent may not show it, I am a Southern native who enjoys going barefoot and drinking sweet…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Having been blessed and honored to have appeared previously in the Mule, I’d proudly hang my southern legitimacy on that fact alone. However, if you need more, let me just point out that when you grow up in a small town anywhere south, Jesus is just about…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I live in Virginia, have lived here for 35 years. I know it’s in the South, but I didn’t recognize that at first. I thought the South was where I grew up—in New Orleans, in Louisiana, in an Italian family with a corner store. I trace back…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Native to Virginia and long-resident in Georgia, I’m as Southern as Southern can be. (Let’s not talk about the seven-year stretch in New Jersey.) A prominent Mid-Western poet once told me during a workshop, “I could listen to you read the phone book.” Flatware, USA If you…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: My father’s family were Appalachian farmers from Letcher County, KY and my mother’s were German Jews who ran a kosher deli on Beale Street in Memphis. I live in a remote fold of the NC mountains now. I still talk slow, still love my mother’s home-baked challah,…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Mike Horan was raised in the South but now makes his home in the desert outside Palm Springs, California. Landscape I get up while it’s still darkHave toOver 100 before eight a.m.The summer usualBut I need to get outside andmove around the neighborhoodmy space before locking myself in…

My Southern Legitimacy Statement: Born in Virginia though the important years happened in North Carolina, now I live in Hanoi, which though considered the north here is still farther south than anywhere else I’ve ever lived. Summer Portrait Nasturtiums and deflated, purple balloon flowers.Wild tiger lilies orange and defiant the…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I’m a Memphian, currently living just outside Jacksonville, Florida. Ohio She is all about living large, She, with a capital S.Living large is easy when you’ve never worked.Working sooner or later makes you feel small. Itgrinds you down, tears you up; we all go into themeat grinder,…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I am originally from Dickson, TN… yes Dickson, a town with no Starbucks or Target. I’m now living on the river in Nashville, TN. So Suddenly Mortal I dreamt I was old and nowthe waking hours seem sharperlike broken shells on a patch of sandmy feet have…

My Southern Legitimacy Philosophy: The minute I cross the Louisiana border, strangers assume I’m a neighbor, distant relative, someone they know. Like I never left. Maybe it’s my brassy humor, my tuba laugh. Wheel of Misfortune When my future ex stepped from hiswhite Caddy, tanked, and the dick threw his…

Southern Legitimacy? I was born and raised in Kentucky, which is south of Ohio, though a bit north of Tennessee. I think I have more southern cred than J.D. Vance, since I spent more than a few summers with my mamaw. A writer dreams of America ~after Jack Kerouac A…

Statement of Southern Legitimacy: My family came to North Carolina in the 1600’s. Then we got lost somehow and found ourselves in Iowa. (Still, it was southern Iowa). The U.S. Air Force came to our aid by shipping my father to Biloxi. This was pre-casinos, barely pre-Camille Biloxi. Back when…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born in West Virginia. Torn between the northern and southern cultures in the United States, I grew up conflicted about my identity as a young woman from Appalachia. When I tell someone I’m from West Virginia, I usually get the response, “How close to Richmond…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Hope all is well. I’m writing to you from south North America, bottom cousin to our neighbors (Canada) to the north. I don’t know if that legitimizes my submission, but I’m going out on a limb just to see. Something Like Language rainalways makesme thinkof languageas lessor…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I left Virginia more than 30 years ago to settle eventually in Seattle: “As far away from us as you can get!” my folks would say. Though I’m happily settled in the Pacific Northwest, I reminisce about humid summer days at the Chesapeake Bay where my parents…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born north of the Mason-Dixon line, but with a Southern spirit. Now I’m happily settled where Southern red cedar bedecked in Spanish moss shares the landscape with live oaks and cabbage palms—Florida,the land of flowers, where it’s harder to stop something from growing than to…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I live a little over eight miles south of the Mason-Dixon Line in a state carved out of glaciers and war. I only eat Mister Bee’s potato chips. Tracing Inert Gasses on West Virginia Day Truth is, I don’t really knowwhat xenon is, but some nightsfull up…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I lived in Kentucky in the 1970s and taught American literature and creative writing at Transylvania University in Lexington, where I frequented the literary scene and gave poetry readings. One of my novels, Devil Dancer, is set in Lexington, another novel, Blacksnake’s Path, has a chapter set…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I have lived in Virginia for nearly 30 years, but that’s not my SLS. I grew up in south Minneapolis, playing hockey outdoors every winter day unless it snowed too hard, so that’s not my SLS. A long time ago, I married an Alabama girl. At least…