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…

Not a southern legitimacy statement, but a statement nonetheless: I was born and raised in Olsztyn, Poland. I studied history at UWM in Olsztyn and currently live and write in Gdansk. born It would take two flights of narrow stairs below the street.The room filled slowly until obstinate gravity suffocated…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born and raised in Michigan, which is south of Canada. When I was 12 years old I was stranded in Kentucky for a week, which is south of Cincinnati. I am a freelance writer and have a degree in History and Political Science from Central…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: My family has lived in the south for around 400 years. Something Simple The days are getting longer and longer, a deputy marshal got a shave afterkilling a man on the Western. I want something simple like whenmy grandfather sliced open awatermelon with a big knife onhis…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: A native Atlantan (not many of those) with deep matriarchal roots in Savannah, I eventually ended up enrolling at The University of the South in Sewanee, TN, where I now teach a course on Tennessee Williams. I can drawl if I have to, but I’ve found it…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: My parents are both Mississippians. My grandfather, Reuben Davis, published two novels about life in the Delta. I grew up in Auburn, Alabama, catching snakes, turtles, lizards, and crawdads, and went to college at the University of the South (Sewanee), where I now teach. I still eye…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born in Confederacy’s Capitol Richmond, Virginia in 1960. By the 1970’s my family had moved to Petersburg, Virginia. I metal detected at Battlefield Park near a grown over ditch that was “The Crater.” Every so often some fool in Walnut Hill would put a parrot…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Coming from Florida, I am no stranger to wild pets. Kat Kitchins in Neptune Beach was notorious for nursing newborn wolves, and I’ve seen a baby gator in a bathtub in Tallahassee. Over the past few months, I’ve attempted to sketch a next-door neighbor in Carolina, both…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: My family came here the year before the Mayflower on the ship that Pocahontas went back to the mother country on. They settled in what’s now Patrick County, VA, and there they’ve stayed ever since. Except my grandmother, who raised me. She ran from the farm the…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I grew up in north Alabama, where I learned to shoot Roman candles at bulls from a truck bed, where I caught a baseball with my nose before I could catch one barehanded, where I lay in an ant bed so the doc could check my ankle…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I am so Southern I capitalize it. I am so Southern, every Sunday my dad would drive us out to the country to see the old home place where he had a pet pig and ate turnips on the way home from school. I am so Southern…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I am originally from Memphis, Tennessee where I attended school from 2nd to 12th grades, at Memphis Campus School and White Station High. After college, I moved to Florida where I am now retired. The Queen’s Skin I, too, am dying to find out why the Queen’s…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I am probably one of the few people here who did not grow up in the South so please don’t hold it against me. My wife and I originally had our honeymoon here just on a whim, but after vacationing down here in South Carolina (James Island,…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born and raised in Texas. According to my grandmother, I am a descendant of one of the families who founded San Patricio, Texas Average Working People Are Not Average A compassionate friend once said to me,over a cup of steaming herbal tea,“Are artists really the…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I live in Charlottesville Virginia. Today is the 12th of August. That statue is still there. And it shouldn’t. The Monument I used to be the statue thatpeople respected and looked at;but now I am the source of shameas all my friends forget my name. There was…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born near the swamp of Houston, Texas and the summertime there still makes me feel like I’m drowning on land. Although it’s not the prettiest beach, I would still run to Galveston often as a college freshman when I needed the solace of the ocean’s…