Jerry Hogan :: “Bright Light,” “Reconcile,” and “Setting the Bar” ::
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Too often, our Native American past has been ignored or left out of Southern history. Here in Fayetteville, Arkansas we have a long connection to the Cherokee Nation. From 1839, when the John Benge detachment on the...
Jane Blanchard :: pluff mud ::
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...
Alan May :: The Boy and the Monster ::
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I grew up in Central Heights in northwest Alabama, and I’ve lived in Tuscaloosa and Knoxville. I have never been outside of the south for more than a few days at a stretch. I was 25 before...
Malcolm Glass :: The Last Time He Tried ::
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I grew up in Florida. And that certainly doesn’t count. Surrounded by rich Yankees for twenty-some-odd years, I had no idea what the South was about. But I came to Tennessee sixty years ago and went to...
John Riley :: Five Truly Incredible Poems ::
Southern Legitimacy Statement: After I listened to Sinatra singing “The Wee Small Hours of the Morning” earlier today and remembering how much I liked it as a kid, I thought about how the song had come into my life. My...
Joshua Edds :: Time ::
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born in West Virginia but have called the Carolinas home for the last 16 years. Time I shot a doe as she stood by her fawn A yearling born in the spring The fawn looked...
Brianna Corley : Omnipotence ::
Southern Legitimacy Statement: In the forgotten parts of Louisiana, where there are more trees than swamp, my great grandfather really did put snapping turtles in his cattle gaps— much to my mother’s and aunt’s horror. Omnipotence Scooter Ray’s pawpaw filled the...
Megan Hutchinson:: Cat Head Biscuits ::
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Born in Huntington, WV and raised in a little, coal-dusted town along the Ohio River–hailed “the Southernmost Point of Ohio,” in fact–I never felt like an “Ohioan.” When you think of Ohio, you probably imagine silos and...
George Bandy :: Newport News ::
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I’ve lived all of my life south of the Mason-Dixon Line. I come from Bandy, which is located in southwest Virginia. I was six when my family moved to Hampton Roads. My dad escaped a life in...
Andy Betz :: Now I Have Two ::
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. Now I Have Two The first, I call...
Poetry
Essays
