Southern Legitimacy Statement : Southern Legitimacy Statement: Though born and raised in Toledo, Ohio, where I started my writing career for a small music magazine, I have lived in rural Virginia with my husband and two children for the last four years. It’s now my home, and my favorite place…
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: Native of NC. Currently reside in Clemmons, NC with my lovely wife Jill. Lived and studied in Paris and Dijon for a year and a half before graduating from Wake Forest. Three novels published. The latest: A WALKING SHADOW (Unsolicited Press) 2018. Go to US Review of…
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: Like many southerners, my mother grew up on a farm and canned a lot of food. Unfortunately aluminum pressure cookers were used on their farm and they canned tomatoes which are acidic. This lead to my mother having aluminum dementia as mentioned in the story. A Fond…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Texas is considered “the south,” right? I sure hope so… I wrote this little story on the back of high school football, the King in Texas. A football game in a small town can bring even the most divided of communities together. Some of my favorite memories…
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…
Southern Legitimacy Statement I’m in the north of Feria, a village in the foothills of the Sierra Morena. It’s the last street before the hill rises up to the castle… but, hey!!! It’s not all going north. I’m in the south of the province of Extremadura, and Extremadura is in…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: For ten generations now my ancestors have lived in the mountains of southwestern Virginia. Great-great-great-great Granddaddy (briefly) lived in Kentucky, until a posse chased him back across the Virginia state line where he (and we) stayed. We eat cornbread, never grits. The Ballad of Lockhart’s Mule: An…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: My people settled the Territory South of the River Ohio, which later took the name ‘Tennessee.’ (Before they were Tennesseans, they were North Carolinians and Virginians.) I can whittle in a tilted-back chair on the front porch, use a tissue-paper comb to keep a tune, and make…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Though the son of a Wedding DJ and the product of a place on the outskirts of Orlando, Florida, I was raised on collard greens, snap peas from my Papa’s garden and fellowship fried chicken after Sunday service at Grandma’s house. If I ever was thirsty I…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born in Bogotá, Colombia. I lived in South Carolina for almost a decade. I earned a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of South Carolina (the original USC), before moving to Clinton, where I worked for a year. I currently live in Bogotá, but…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: It’s the language around me that reminds me that I’m in the south. My sister is always fixin’ to do or to go somewhere. She used to live down the street from the POlice Station. Hell’s Bells my mother didn’t give a hot damn what the Sam…
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 grew up in New York with dyed-in-the wool Southern parents. They arrived in the city during The Depression determined “to make it,” as my father said, and they did. But they brought along with them the unwritten Southern rulebook of “shoulds” and expectations, which I called…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Last time I told ya’ll bout the tote sack my Momma made from Daddy’s bluejeans so I could pick cotton when I was six-year-old. Well, I’m gonna tell on myself a bit now – reckon the statute of limitations is run out. Me and my cousins, Michael…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I am a Mississippian, born in the Northern Hills and currently living in the flatlands of the Delta. I was fortunate enough to grow up in a rural community where I learned the value of family, faith, and food, even if I didn’t know to appreciate these…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Proud as a peacock to be truly southern. Born below the gnat line in middle Georgia. Lived in Hot Atlanta a few years, then raised a bunch youngins within a view of the north Georgia mountains. Currently spreading my feathers in the humid swamps of north-central Florida….
Southern Legitimacy Statement: What could be more Southern than a poem about Jesus? Well, okay: I grew up off the North Carolina coast and spent my childhood summers barefoot, hopping back and forth from the blazing-hot black asphalt of the road and the sandspur thickets along its sides. Despite those…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Michelle Renee Hoppe is south of Jordan in Saudi Arabia. She grew up in Florida for a hot minute, and she is a nomadic displaced and fragmented sort of ghosty person. Tulip Bulbs Dry on a Sunday Morning of a Utah Spring When I learned Mormonism uprooted reason,…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I’m so Southern, my Ancestry profile predicted my relationship with my stepmother to be a 5th-8th cousin. Does the shared DNA make me uncomfortable? Nope. It makes me an Alabamian. Jane Day The locals of Orem Crossroads don’t need a calendar to know when July rolls around….
Southern Legitimacy Statement: When I was a kid, I told my dad, sitting it the passenger side of his rusted Ford truck, “I ain’t a Southerner.” My dad, who lived his whole life in Appalachia said, “You don’t really have a choice in that.” It took me a while to…