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,...
Poetry
Essays
