Essays

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...
Blog

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...
Poetry

Justin Evans Poetry

SLS: Though I was not born or raised in the South, I have lived in Georgia, Texas, and in North Carolina, while I was in the U.S. Army. I may not know much, but I know enough to never refer...
Fiction

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...
Fiction

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...
Fiction

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...
Fiction

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...
Poetry

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....
The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature
Essays

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...
Blog

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.