The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature
Poetry

Adreyo Sen: Poetry

The following is my Southern Legitimacy Statement: I just loved “Gone With the Wind.” For the longest time, I wanted to be Melanie. Now, I am inching towards Scarlett. The Knowable On quiet streets Barely kissed by the sun, A...
The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature
Poetry

Tim Mattamoe: Poetry

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I live in quiet retirement in Chatham County, the gem of the Carolina Central Piedmont. I once taught history in Beaufort County, the pearl of the Carolina Coastal Plain. I am American by birth, Southerner because I...
Essays

Michael Black: Chaiwalla (essay)

My Southern Legitimacy Statement is as follows: I’m a proud Arkansan even with it hurts to be, and I’ve found hill people and southern charm around the world. Biscuits aren’t always fluffy, but you know when you’ve eaten one. To add...
Fiction

Cormac McShane: Ruin (short fiction)

Southern Legitimacy Statement: My Southern-ness is complex, and split between pride and shame. My mother is from Virginia, and a descendant of the Prestons who came over in the early eighteenth-century. Smithfield Plantation near Blacksburg is an ancestral home of...