Claire Fullerton: Whistlin’ Dixie
Southern Legitimacy Statement I come from Memphis. I claim ownership to her nuances, which I wear like a badge of honor. And it’s not so much that I come from Memphis as I come from her ways and means. There’s...
Ronnie Sirmans: 4ever
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born and raised in Georgia and that’s where I’ve returned. I’ve worked at Southern newspapers. And I enjoy tomato sandwiches each summer using tomatoes grown at home.
Joe Halstead: Hoppy
SOUTHERN LEGITIMACY STATEMENT: It’s kind of wild where I grew up. I had my own gun at six years old. Ran down rabbits with my dad and helped beat their heads against the bumper of the truck, because they weren’t...
Michelle Brooks: All Women Are Bunnies
Southern Legitimacy Statement: As for my southern legitimacy statement, here it goes. I grew up in Mineral Wells, Texas where my mother sold rattlesnakes that had been frozen and subsequently fashioned into paperweights. Nothing could put a smile on her face...
Memoirs on the Dead Mule
The Dead Mule speaks in many voices. Mule Essays lead the mind into myriad swamps of distant memories or new ideas covered in eloquent jargon and folksy rough and rowdy ways. We’ve decided to feature Memoirs as a stand-alone section...
Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow by Sara Dacus with Lindsey Bell and James Wiser
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born and have lived the entirety of my life in Searcy, Arkansas. I believe in southern hospitality, and I believe there is no greater entertainment than watching fast horses run in a circle while wearing...
Sidney Kidd: The Day I Grew Up
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I reckon my statement should include things I take for granted even as I attempt to ignore all the stereotypical attributes. I grew up in a three room shotgun shack that leaned to the left upon rotted...
Willie Smith: One Handful
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born in Greenbelt, Maryland and left that Yankee-leaning state at age 3 to spend the next 15 of my formative years in Fairfax County, Virginia. In public school I studied Virginia History in the 4th, 7th...
Gracjan Kraszewski: American Believer
Southern Legitimacy Statement: “American Believer” … is told through an antihero’s perspective and employs humor to ask deeply serious theological and societal questions. What do people worship? That is the story’s central question. This work is inspired, however loosely, by the...
Ferdinand Hunter: Evan’s Lament
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I grew up in a small Georgia town and spent my childhood summers in Vicksburg, Mississippi. Since then I have lived in many countries, finding a way to make a home in all of those places. But no...
Sean Lause: For Little Sister
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I hereby swear that I love my MaMaw and see her about once a year. I know where the Mason-Dixon line is supposed to be though I have never been able to actually find it while traveling....
Cortney Cameron: Dads and Guitars
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I have lived in North Carolina since the turn of the new millennium. I eat Cajun fried chicken for at least one meal daily, have received live diddles in the mail, and secretly brewed wild blackberry wine in...
New Editors Chosen for the Dead Mule
Our new Poetry Editor is … drum roll please Denise K. James. Read her 2012 poetry on the Mule by clicking here.
:: Masthead ::
“No good Southern fiction (poem, essay, memoir) is complete without a Dead Mule”…since 1996. Online since 1996, the Dead Mule School of Southern Literature represents the best, the finest, the most comprehensive compilation of original contemporary literature on the internet....
September Fiction and All
One week left before the Dead Mule publishes its October 2016 issue. Get your fill of September this week and enjoy the heck out of the writing. It’s damn skippy good. Look forward to new works on Oct 1.
Poetry
Essays
