Category: Poetry

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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,...

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...