Wendy Carlisle: Poetry (five poems)
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I have been here before and so will not redundify you with tales of my Florida childhood my young womanhood West Virginia and in Maryland. I’ll go right to Arkansas where I began living in 1972/3 and where I’ve...
Alexandra Melnick: Blade Running In the South (essay)
In 1990, at a public lecture series on art in Los Angeles, three out of five leading urban planners agreed that they hoped someday L.A. would look like the film Blade Runner (1982. Beginning discussions in this essay refer to...
Blake Kilgore: Inspection (memoir)
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I grew up in several parts of the South. For starters, I was born in Big D, and then my family moved to the panhandle of Texas, where there are more oil pumps and canyons than trees. Spent...
Karl Kirkland: “Count No Count” and “No Show Jones”: The Very Best of the Southern Gothic Tradition (essay)
Southern Legitimacy Statement: (In Faulknerian style) I was born in LA (Lower Alabama) rural Escambia County, Alabama (near the state line) right above Escambia County, Florida, (who spends its whole life trying to be Escambia County, Alabama), and raised in a...
Michele Davis: You Just Never Know: The True Story of Sol Peska (essay)
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I believe that in a previous life I was from the Deep South. Not just south of the Mason-Dixon line, but as far south as you can go before wading into the Gulf. The voices in my head...
Donna Nixon-Walker: In Weldon’s Photo (fiction)
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I am a native Texan and saw so many Southern Gothic people as I grew up. In Weldon’s Photo Children do not fathom the sketchy dotted lines of kinship. Like prized jewelry, we adorned Mother’s arms and lap....
Jacquelyn L. M. Scott: Sleeping (memoir)
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born and raised in a small town in Tennessee named Jefferson City. A daughter of a self-proclaimed “Tennessee Hillbilly,” I can shoot a gun and ride a horse, all while eating cornbread soaked in milk. Sleeping...
Warren Hines: Taranaki Surf Camp (memoir)
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I grew up in a decaying town in the Mississippi Delta as an attorney’s son with riverboat captain uncles who treasure few worldly pleasures more than whiskey and a good story. Taranaki Surf Camp “Would ya’ll like to...
Dakota Hensley: The Button (poetry)
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Like I said, I’m from a small town in Southern Kentucky. That small town is Harlan, in the Appalachian mountains. I’ve been here my entire life and my writing style is influenced by Delta Blues music. THE BUTTON...
Tom Shehan: Lyle’s Word on the Lexicon of Forcible Memory (fiction)
My Southern Legitimacy Statement says: I have appeared several times in your pages, have read and been published in North Carolina, and one of my sons resides in North Carolina where I have visited and vacationed. Lyle’s Word On The...
Taylor Phillips: Sons of Sisyphus (fiction)
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born in Texas and raised in Texas, as were my parents and grandparents and great grandparents and so on. I grew up in the Big Thicket of Southeast Texas and currently reside in the Hill Country...
Randall Ivey: Mae Ola, A Remonstrance
Southern Legitimacy Statement: As for my Southern Legitimacy Statement, except for some brief excursions here and there, I have always lived in South Carolina. Mae Ola, A Remonstrance You just love to worry, don’t you? Wallow in worrying, I say....
JoAnn Williams: White Tee Shirts (memoir)
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I am a sixth generation Texan and proud of it. I am not proud of the current set of Texas’ elected representatives. I believe anyone who does not believe that grits are a gourmet food choice has...
Poetry
Essays
