Jane Blanchard: Three Poems (poetry)
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Native to Virginia and long-resident in Georgia, I’m as Southern as Southern can be. (Let’s not talk about the seven-year stretch in New Jersey.) A prominent Mid-Western poet once told me during a workshop, “I could listen to...
Anne Botsford: The Pickles (memoir)
Southern Legitimacy Statement: While standing up in a rowboat, I slapped six-foot alligator gars on the head with my oar, walked over a rattlesnake so sound asleep in the sun that it didn’t wake up, turned over rocks to see if...
Marijean Oldham : Saying Goodbye to Clover (memoir)
Southern Legitimacy Statement: My Southern Legitimacy is in evidence when I tell you that yesterday I wore a dress and stockings to attend a ladies’ tea party where we drank champagne all afternoon. Most of the ladies are aging exotic dancers,...
Epiphany Ferrell: About the Money (fiction)
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I live in Southern Illinois. Yes I know Illinois is a Yankee state. Hear me out. First off, the regional newspaper capitalizes the S in Southern Illinois because we are an area distinct from the rest of...
Jesse Miller: Dancing (fiction)
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I grew in the deepest part of south Georgia where high school was integrated but homecoming courts and year book superlatives were not. This was a quiet, pleasant town but the atmosphere of the town still clung...
David Tromblay: Multipurpose Cleaner (memoir)
Southern Legitimacy Statement: David Tromblay lived in a single wide trailer on a piece of leased land somewhere on the Fond du Lac Reservation until his parents split up. Before earning a BA in English and Writing from UW-Superior, he served...
Paul Castonguay: And All of Us, Clay (fiction)
Southern Legitimacy Statement: My parent’s left New England for a small town in Virginia’s New River Valley four years before I was born. I started kindergarten with the same 95 people I would graduate high school with. We all grew up...
Carl Wade Thompson: The Prodigal (poetry)
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I am a native-born Oklahoma poet who’s work is inspired by nature, class, and life experiences that were shaped by my Southern family. The poem is inspired by a recent family vacation to Gulf Shores, Alabama and how...
Anne Anthony: Tulip Tree (short fiction)
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Anne Anthony lives in North Carolina though when she engages you in conversation it’s clear she was born above the Mason-Dixon Line. Still, if she’s reading you her stories, sometimes her voice slides into the gentle sway of...
TJ Barnum: Daddy Jim Teaches Me to Shoot (memoir)
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born and raised in Texas. Some people try to say Texas is more Southwest than South. Truth is, we have our own peculiar ways, like every state. My ggg-grandfather was hanged by the Confederates for...
Anne Anthony to lead session at NC Writer’s Network Spring Conference
The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature contributor Anne Anthony will lead the session “How to Start Submitting” at the North Carolina Writers’ Network 2018 Spring Conference. Click here for full details on the NCWN 2018 Spring Conference. Anne Anthony...
Tom Sheehan: Flashing Mirrors at a House Built in 1742, III (poem)
Flashing Mirrors at a House Built in 1742, III I leaned against the largest maple tree, planted hungry years before upon a leech trench, watching my going out of me at play and shining the souls of mirrors back, telling...
Karan Freimark: The Hunt (fiction)
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born and raised in Kentucky, but spent most of my adult life In the south. I’ve come back to Kentucky now–I missed the hills. The Hunt The gray light filtering through the curtains was a...
Benjamin Mangrum: Children with Guns (fiction)
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born in Jackson, Mississippi, and lived in Rankin County, MS, until I lit out for the territories at twenty-one. I found myself in Waco, Texas, for four years, until I returned to the South proper–that...
Maggie Hess: Hoodwinked Vignettes (fiction)
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Maggie Hess is a Southerner from Bristol, TN. Hoodwinked Vignettes Up-street Once there lived three middle aged men, side by side on a street called Rose Street. Every day since retirement, their job was to mow grass that...