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...
Claire Fullerton: A Southern Voice
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...
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.
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.
Wayne Scheer: Summertime Ain’t No Time To Sing About
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Wayne Scheer, a Yankee by birth and a lover of thin crust pizza, has lived in the South long enough to crumble bacon into his grits and to think of Moon Pie as a food group.
Charity Cupcakes by Valerie MacEwan
My Southern Legitimacy Statement seems kinda’ obvious being as I am the publisher of the Dead Mule School of Southern Literature. That said, I revel in the South. Love my neighbors as myself and sit on the porch with them. I...
Allison Thorpe: Five Poems
SLS – I’ve swallowed moonshine and lived to brag about it; escaped a copperhead’s randy tongue; ridden a tobacco setter like some rogue elephant; eaten fresh-caught bluegill at dawn; been romanced by a choir of whippoorwills; and fallen asleep amid...
A Chocolate Tale by Virginia Lee
Southern Legitimacy Statement — Named by a daddy who aspired to Southern gentility, Virginia Lee lived up to her name and earned a degree in Southern Studies at the University of Mississippi. Born and raised in the Piedmont of North...
Convalescence by Alan Steele
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I'm from a small town just outside Cowtown (Fort Worth to those who don't know better), with white gravel roads that claimed my front teeth one time and the skin off my knees and hands a few more times. I'm from a place that meant running around with no shirt or shoes from May to September, trips to Mott's 5 and 10, and visits to grandma down around Houston to work the fields, each her famous drop cookies, and help her cook pie or cobbler or wild grape jelly. Dad was a cop and mom stayed home, and I'm still close by, though the town has changed and the light in town has a few new friends and a new toll road for competition. The fire department closest is still volunteer and football will always be king on Friday night.
Poetry
Essays
