Jeff Binkley : The Writer’s Poem : August 2019
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Jeff is a musician, educator, and author from Huntsville, AL. He enjoys time alone to think and pursue creative projects, but not as much as he enjoys a good cup of coffee with his wife, Amy. The...
Sarah Everett : Supermarket Mayhem : Flash Fiction : August 2019
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born and raised in the frosty Minnesota where the winters are long and harsh, and the sight of green grass is a memory to be cherished. That doesn’t mean that I’m as cold as the weather,...
Will Mullins: A Brief Memoir of an East Coast Entrepreneur: How Past Endeavors Inform Future Business Dreams : August 2019
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I grew up in the southwestern corner of Virginia and Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. I currently reside in Wilmington, North Carolina. My father’s businesses were always headquartered in southwest Virginia. A Brief Memoir of an East Coast...
Bruce Naccari : Chene Fou, Near a Crossroads : Fiction : August 2019
My Southern legitimacy lies in being a native and lifelong citizen of a City that was once largest in the South and called its Queen City, la Nouvelle Orleans in l’Isle d’Orleans in SE Louisiana (the place whose bankers’ ten...
John Dorroh : Asparagus Tales : August 2019
Southern Legitimacy Statement: John Dorroh’s Irish ancestors reached the shores of South Carolina a few hundred years ago, and began migrating to the west and south. County Antrim is well-represented by the Dorroh lineage. After traveling the world as an...
Sharon Wishnow: An Article of Lost Faith : August 2019
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Last year when Fairfax High school had a legitimate threat from a potential school shooter, the idea for this story began. When our local Jewish Community Center was horrifically vandalized, my thoughts turned to how faith and...
Sharon Willdin: L’appel du Vide : Fiction : August 2019
Southern Legitimacy Statement: The story was inspired by a woman who lost everyone she loves and lives alone with her memories in a Southern mansion. L’appel du Vide The new moon has cast darkness over my home. A home sealed...
Reese Belew : Walmartians and Assholebergers : fiction: August 2019
Southern Legitimacy Statement: The South is a complex kaleidoscope of contradictions that historically coexisted through compartmentalizing when ideal clashed with real. Brutality and gentility, discrimination and democracy, hospitality and race/class hostility, and more odd couples, lived and live in our...
Terrence Sykes : Poetry : August 2019
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I fear that my complete listing of southern legitimacy would crash the cosmos & petunias so I shall HENCEFORTHWITH condense – I was born a coal miner’s son in the coal hollers of southwestern Virginia & as...
Rosemarie Dombrowski : Memoirs : August 2019
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I live in South Scottsdale, which is south of Old Town Scottsdale, so it’s not the city you think of when you think of Scottsdale, AZ. I’m from a place called St. Joseph, Missouri, which is south...
August is a huge month for the Mule!
We’re publishing 20 essays, memoirs, short stories, poetry collections … got it going on in August. Pay attention to our Southern Legitimacy Statements each month. They sure do make the Dead Mule sing. We’ve got some swell ones in August....
Jennifer Richardson : Cultural Debts : Essays/Memoirs : July 2019
My Southern Legitimacy Statement: I grew up in southwest Florida where crocodiles living in the golf course lake routinely consumed small dogs whole. Cultural Debts I hadn’t thought of Jimmy Buffett for twenty years when, in the span of a...
Steven Levi: How Nags Head Lost its Apostrophe : Fiction : July 2019
Southern Legitimacy Statement: This is a fake news story of how Nags Head, North Carolina lost its apostrophe. How Nags Head Lost its Apostrophe “Take it and be damned!” . . . Thomas J. Harkaway Perhaps the first and most...
Timothy Rodriguez: Deputy Carson Tinnin, summer of 1983 : Fiction : July 2019
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I read that you folks originated in Pamlico. I used to work for the Sun Journal in New Bern. That was back in the days when daily newspapers were healthy. This story is one of a 100...
Leslie Kain : Grampa : Memoirs : July 2019
Southern Legitimacy Statement: My earliest memories were of living in a small coal-mining “company house” near Shinnston West Virginia, and of using the two-holer out back. The aunt who raised me eventually moved the family to a small enclave of...