Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born and raised in Missouri and now live (very, very) close to Atlanta. With the exception of college, I have spent my entire life in the South. She Would Always Be My Girl From birth, she was love at first sightHer eyes set my heart…

As for a Southern Legitimacy statement, here goes:I was born and raised outside of Knoxville, Tennessee.  One great-great-great grandfather was an abolitionist state representative in the Radical Republican legislature in Tennessee during Reconstruction.  Another great-great-great grandfather was a member of the 1st Tennessee Cavalry, CSA, was wounded, captured, and interned…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: There’s more to the South than culture, food, idiom, hunting, fishing and football. I have been a citizen of the South for a long time. I have seen changes in the demographics, the climate, the culture seen through how we respond to and perceive each other –…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: In keeping with the theme of this poem, various motorcycles marked my years in the South. In high school in Winston-Salem, I rode a Honda CT90, low on speed and power, but I got back and forth to school for 50 cents a week. At Wake Forest,…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: We moved to North Carolina when I was ten. It was 1979, and I watched The Dukes of Hazard religiously. I spent summer days in the woods along the Haw River. My buddy and I would walk the creek looking for crayfish, keeping a careful eye out…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Work, labor, and economy have been areas of focus in my art practice over the last several years. Before I began my journey as a visual artist and educator, I worked blue collar jobs in the printing and manufacturing industries. Manual labor, the daily grind, hustling, however…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Kristina Heflin spent her formative years hiking in the Georgian foothills of the Appalachians. It was there she learned a love for all animals, from the squishy frogs of the backwoods criks to the bumbling bears of the piney mountains. Today, she passes on her love and…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Kelly Jones hates the sound of cicadas but loves lightning bugs, biscuits, and the way kudzu makes fun shapes out of old houses and powerlines. Their power animal is the manatee, and Wild Turkey is their strong drink of choice. They were born in Raleigh in the…

Southern Legitimacy Statement Born and raised in Caldwell County, North Carolina, I have lived in the Old North State most of my life (except for two soggy years in Oregon — what was I thinking?). I am the youngest of three sisters raised in our Mama’s beauty shop, which was…

I’m Charlie Southerland. When you check up on me, you’ll also find ‘Charles’ Southerland in most of my published work. It is regrettable and unavoidable. However, I live on my 240-acre farm, which is more than I deserve or can take care of out here in North-Central Arkansas, smack in…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born in Atlanta, Georgia and reared on Saturday morning biscuits from the 1956 To The Bride Cookbook. My mother’s family owned a dairy farm in Mississippi and her Southern Baptist Minister grandfather stopped a lynch mob in Cedartown, Georgia. My sister makes dilli beans months…

As for being a bonafide Southerner, I was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia and have lived on the panhandle of Florida (aka the culturally southern part of Florida) and in North Carolina in my adulthood. Summers on the Mountain Town I. Sneaking Out Behind Grandma’s Sis & I trail…

Southern Legitimacy Statement My father and his ancestors are from the Smoky Mountains of Western North Carolina, mainly Haywood, Henderson and Buncombe Counties. We spent many summers there at the old family homestead in Crabtree and with family in Clyde, Waynesville and Hendersonville, where I learned to drink water from…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born in Texas. Have never lived above the Mason-Dixon Line. Drawn to southern weather and landscapes. Grew up saying y’all and now advocate for it becoming the official second person plural in English. Three Poems Tornado Year That was the year we almost lost everything,…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Well, let’s begin with: I wrote all of these poems when living south of the border, far south–as in Guatemala. Hope that legitimizes me. If not, let me say that I taught at McNeese State University for a bit in another life and/or that I spent 20+…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: The joke is that my ancestors ran brothels and stole hogs in South Carolina; that’s why we lived in Mississippi. I know the way that pine trees bend in hurricane winds, and I know how catfish should be prepared (lightly fried, salt and pepper). My accent retreated…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I live in the very south of the United Kingdom: Southampton. I attend the University of Southampton. The End of This Week Is Sunday Former muse, You lean in and pluck the hanging earring from my right lobe Pushing my hair back with your knuckles Keep it…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Born at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina and raised in Virginia, UK for a bit for school and writing and nannying and waitressing and bartending whilst lying to folks about wine, then back to Virginia without notice, before Philadelphia, and then Atlanta, which is now the place…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Lives in my town! Can’t get much more southern than that. Jonathan is a consummate writer and a wonderful gardener. He’s been southern all his life.   A COVID-19 Halloween  Out there: No pale horse Or long, black robes No latex masks Of grisly horror No long…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Virginia Lee does not consider herself a poet, but she can write a decent set of song lyrics when the wind is just right and the moon’s phase is amenable. Lee mostly writes colloquial fiction set in the American South as suits her otherwise seemingly useless degree…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I lived my entire childhood under the shadow of the Brushy Mountains in Western North Carolina. I lived in a farmhouse built in 1897 or so that was bought by my great great grandmother Pearl who was a madame in a brothel. My family was always rich…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Gerry who’s worked as a healthcare consultant in Nashville, partied with relatives living in Greensboro and stayed awhile in Sunflower County, Mississippi. “FAMILIAS” Thirty-Seven Year Kvetch “I think it’s just elegant to have an imagination. I just have no imagination at all. I have lots of other…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I’ve been cogitating Southern Lit for over sixty years, from the time I was a student of Donald Davidson, one of them Fugitive guys at Vanderbilt. (I was also on a fancy literary panel with John Crowe Ransom. Wrote a poem for Allen Tate which he said,…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born in the Cumberland Mountains in the Heart of Appalachia on Virginia’s Crooked Road near the border of Tennessee, Kentucky and North Carolina. My dad was a tobacco farmer, my brothers were loggers, and my uncle died of Black Lung Disease from his work in…