
Martha Branson : Memoir : Oct 2020
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I grew up in rural North Carolina. Though I drink my tea with a bit less sugar these days, the soles of my feet are still tough from going barefoot. I never sit in grass or weeds...

Matt Stephenson : Fiction : Oct 2020
Southern Legitimacy Statement : I was born and raised in the great state of North Carolina, where I grew up in what was once a farming community. I was raised by those who grew up working in the tobacco fields...

James Ryer : Poetry : Oct 2020
Southern Legitimacy Statement: There’s more to the South than culture, food, idiom, hunting, fishing and football. I have been a citizen of the South for a long time. I have seen changes in the demographics, the climate, the culture seen...

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...