S.E.B. Detling :: On Choosing the Messages Adults Send to Children ::
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Given up for adoption in a one-light Tennessee town, I grew up in Memphis along the Mississippi River dancing ballet at the historic Orpheum Theatre and later dancing improv in the bars along Beale Street. I now...
David Kendall :: Resurrection of the Dead Mule
Southern Legitimacy Statement: A few years in Biloxi, Mississippi Near the coast of waters blue, I enjoyed the Southern hospitality From the local folks I knew. Hearts as big as the whole outdoors And warm welcomes as if royalty, I...
Tyler Robert Sheldon :: So What Happened Was, Or: The Ghost and the Bell ::
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I’ve lived in Louisiana for a handful of years, and I’m now working on a PhD in English at LSU. In my time here, I’ve tried many different gas stations’ boudin (they always have the BEST boudin....
Alexander Payne Morgan :: Cargo Cult ::
SOUTHERN LEGITIMACY: I lived all my life in Georgia until I graduated from the University of Georgia. My mother was born in Paducah, Kentucky, and her mother in Tennessee. My mother’s grandfather used enslaved labor on his farm, fought with...
Les Brown :: Chicken House ::
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I am a North Carolina free-range mountain farm boy. I crawled all over our Blue Ridge, swam with water snakes in the icy cold Stillhouse Branch, (that I now own). aptly named because my great grandfather operated...
Edward Burke :: Marlovian Moment ::
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Edward Burke (dba strannikov) now lives for the second time in his life south of the Red River demarcating Texas from Oklahoma. He grew up in South Carolina, and growing up once there was plenty, although he...
Andrew Johnson :: Big Bottom Fish ::
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I visited the Asbury revival in Wilmore Kentucky for five days. The people there were hospitable and friendly, epitomizing Southern Charm. In the town and the city, I frequently heard “God Bless You.” It felt like a...
Danny Barbare :: Pisgah Mountain
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Basically, I’m 60, and I have never left the South. I went North one time to get vitamins. And Thanksgiving once. Other than that, I stayed stuck in Greenville, South Carolina and other Southern states. My accent...
Ettore Cassetta :: Ghost Country
Southern Legitimacy Statement: My maternal grandfather was born in the south of the Marche region, southern Italy, in 1930. In 1948 he joined the Carabinieri Corps in hopes to find stable employment after the war, and was sent southern still,...
Richard Weaver: “In the Year of the Mullet”
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born on the same day that George Armstrong Custer died, though “Autie”, as he called his adopted self, and I never exchanged letters. But that don’t make me a soldier or a Southerner. The first...
May Jordan: “Walking Through”
Walking Through A Sunday lit with sunlightmade the mountainof snow we accumulated, shine as if a glacier at dawn.I was up-stairs getting dressedfor church when suddenly,my husband called for meto come down in a hurry . . .a giant, chestnut...
Barbara Conrad: “This Bed”
This Bed I’m counting the years I’ve slept in this Charleston four-poster rice bed,and yes, the men who’ve slept here with me. More than five, fewer than a dozen, only two still rooted in regret. Even when nights are long...
Paul Jones: “Hell”
About my Southernness: I am still Southern. The other day, I visited the Old St Paul’s Cemetery near Newton, NC. The place is chock full of Setzers, my grandmother’s people. The first one in the ground there came from Heidelberg...
David Kirby: “I’m Not the Person She Thinks You Are”
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I spent the first twenty-one years of my life in Baton Rouge. Like everyone else, I knew all about Billy Cannon, the LSU halfback who won the Heisman Trophy and was later arrested for counterfeiting and sent...
Ed Brickell: The Horned Toads Confront Their Young Human Captors
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born in Batesville, Arkansas and was duly moved to Palestine, Texas at the age of three so my dad could try his hand at coaching Texas high school football. He was pretty good at it...
David Earl Williams: When She Dressed Up Nice
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I grew up at Greenup County in Kentucky right near Plum Fork Holler. My grandfather was a graduate of Leavenworth in Kansas where he received his federal degree in Moonshine. Jesse Stuart came to my high school,...
Lenny Lianne: When Rains Were Frog Chokers
My Southern Legitimacy Statement: I spent the first five-eighth of my life, the formative years, in Virginia and come from Southerners with a love of language and landscape, good storytellers. My ideal meal would be a tall glass of iced...
Claire Massey: Driver Side Window
Southern Legitimacy Statement: My grandparents’ Mississippi home was my port in a storm. There was literal nourishment (oh, that gumbo and cornbread!) as well as literary food for a budding creative. No matter the subject, their bookshelves were open. There...
Jessica Weyer Bentley: Revival
Southern Legitimacy Statement: As with all volunteer vegetation, I was transferred South as a seedling in the wind as my mother decided to give a southern man a chance the second time around. Though I was a New Yorker’s daughter,...
Kent Reichert: Requiem: For Those He Left Behind
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Los Angeles, CA and Belews Creek, NC can be found around the 35th parallel. Both are referred to as “southern” even though they exist at opposite ends of the country. Having spent my formative years in LA...
Carol Parris Krauss: Poem
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born from two western NC mountain folk and have kissed the clouds crossing Grandfather Mountain Bridge. As a Clemson graduate, like my father before me, my blood runs orange. I warsh my clothes and sometime...
Jerry Hogan: Poetry
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I’m from Fayetteville, in Northwest Arkansas. Geographically, we’re just barely in the South and are sometimes listed as being in the Southwest – that’s a joke. I was raised with the same stories and myths as everyone...
B. Lynn Zika: Poetry:
Southern Legitimacy Statement: As a child I took comfort in our town square statue. He faced the direction of the state college where my father taught English. To his right the five and dime sheltered magic slates and glass piggy...
Byron Hoot: Poetry:
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Born and raised in West Virginia now living in The Wilds of Pennsylvania. Once born in Appalachia, you never live any place else in your heart. Returning I have recycled myself back to where I began, a...
B. Lynne Zika: Poetry:
Southern legitimacy statement: Chub Petersen’s mama didn’t teach him the necessity of summer underthings when he sat in shorts playing marbles on my front sidewalk. Consequently I received an early education in anatomy, albeit not a very welcome one. I...
Poetry
Essays
