Southern Legitimacy Statement My parents were born in the south. Colloquialisms are so ingrained in me that when I repeat them, people in the western states look at me like I’ve got a caterpillar perched on my nose. I don’t think I’ve pronounced the ‘g’ on any word ending with ‘ing’ since I learned how to talk. I say pillas instead of pillows and windas … well, you get the idea. My brother taught me how to catch crawdads in a can when we were kids. He also shot me in the face with his BB gun. Ouch!

Southern Legitimacy Statement: My father was possessed by a trailer. My sister gave into the influence of a creek full of evil spirits housed in wrecked cars. I myself am unduly vulnerable to the influence of heavy metal and hip-hop. I wear my shirt open two buttons – not on purpose but because this is simply the kind of animal I am. I partially grew up in a trailer in Big Flat Arkansas, without electricity, that smelled kind of funny because of the dead salamanders. I almost fell over in the outhouse while simultaneously balancing on the one plank that wasn’t rotten and taking a crap. I had few friends as a teenager in Kentucky. And the ones I did have were mostly dogs and trees. I’ve killed a lot of things and felt bad about it, but can’t figure out any other way to live.

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I proudly claim Southwest Virginia as my home. I grew up in the heart of the Appalachian Mountains with three brothers. My childhood was spent roaming through the woods, choppin' off roosters' heads (Mom said we couldn't have more than one rooster at a time), and going to school. When I was fourteen, my daddy taught me how to drive a tractor. When I was fifteen, my little brother taught me how to shoot a gun (only because them darn coyotes kept snatchin' the baby cows - I would not have touched a gun otherwise). As I grew older, people seemed to think that these things were something to be ashamed 'bout. I tried to write things that didn't quite sound like me, but were about city people. I don't know a darn thing about city people, except what I read in books. Therefore, my writing wasn't that great. Then, I started writing about what I know - country people, and my writing sounded pretty good. I say, leave the city writin' for those that live in the city. Me? I am goin' to write about the country and my beloved Appalachian Mountains.

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I live in East Alabama, otherwise known as the Florida panhandle.

Southern Legitimacy Statement In August there was always the river. On dog days, school beckoning, the joy of uninterrupted time between the morning and evening chores long absorbed by a sun that had flattened your expectations of what summer would bring, I seemed to always find myself at the river. Some people are drawn to fire, others to water, moving water that is, even if the movement is nearly imperceptible, and in my South the summer heat warned me away from fire. It was the river inching through the thick woods that lured me to come, preferably alone, to come and clear away a spot to sit among the dead leaves and rocks and branches, to come and immerse myself in the stream of thoughts and dreams and ambitions that, yet unbruised by the world, raced inside the visitor sitting above the patient river.