Scott Piner : Essay : Oct 2020
SOUTHERN LEGITIMACY STATEMENT: I grew up crossing the Mississippi River each weekend to go four-wheeling, fishing, and running around barefoot. From Quincy, IL to Maywood, Missouri (20 short back-road minutes from Hannibal, MO, home of Mark Twain), my dad and...
Candice Kelsey : Fiction : Oct 2020
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I grew up miles from Kentucky, spent summers in Tennessee, and married a guy from Tennessee. I consider the South my second home. Is that legitimate enough? Oh, my daughter will be attending Ole Miss in the...
Rodney Barfield : Fiction : Oct 2020
Southern Legitimacy Statement: There used to be preachers along the North Carolina/Virginia border who ran whiskey Saturday nights and preached fire and brimstone Sunday mornings. I know. I listened to them through the windows of The Holy Way Baptist Church...
Robert Plumlee : Memoir : Oct 2020
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I had two mules by the time I was 18 — old Jake and Sara Jane. I learn to plow the rich black dirt fields of East Texas at 14. That’s when I learned “A farting mule...
Sandra Cimadori : Flash Fiction : Oct 2020
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I ate grits for the first time when I was eighteen and a starving university student in Tallahassee, Florida. Grits filled something deep inside me as did the intoxicating perfume of a rainstorm during a summer afternoon...
Nicholas Manai : Fiction : Oct 2020
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born in the North, live in the North, but spent 4 years studying literature in Atlanta, which I’m guessing you don’t consider to be the South. This story is, however, about people who came to...
Jason Wallace : Flash Fiction : Oct 2020
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born in Hong Kong (it’s in the southern part of China). I lived in Burlington, KY for a few years. While I was coaching high school football across the river in Ohio, the coaches would...
Chris Espenshade: Honesty of the Harley Rider : Now 2020
Southern Legitimacy Statement: In keeping with the theme of this poem, various motorcycles marked my years in the South. In high school in Winston-Salem, I rode a Honda CT90, low on speed and power, but I got back and forth...
Craig Kittner: Poetry : September 2020
Southern Legitimacy Statement: We moved to North Carolina when I was ten. It was 1979, and I watched The Dukes of Hazard religiously. I spent summer days in the woods along the Haw River. My buddy and I would walk...
Kevin Brown : Memoir : September 2020
And here is my Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born in Jackson, TN, and grew up in Johnson City, TN, living there from the time I was two until I was twenty-four. I’ve lived in Mississippi and Georgia, but most...
Layne Radlauer : Essay : September 2020
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I am a Gulf-Coast Southerner, through and through. I was born in New Orleans, Louisiana. For the first half of my life, I lived in uptown until Hurricane Katrina. After swimming out of my home and all...
R. J. Roberts : Memoir : September 2020
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I speak with a muddled southern accent. I lived in the north all my life, but my father’s family comes from the south, and on their trek north they didn’t bring money, brains, better ideas, or even...
Thony Aiuppy : Poetry : September 2020
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Work, labor, and economy have been areas of focus in my art practice over the last several years. Before I began my journey as a visual artist and educator, I worked blue collar jobs in the printing...