Category: Fiction

Fiction

Van Wurm: Pachinko in the Afterlife

Southern Legitimacy Statement: For my prior publications in The Mule, I have written of my semi-fictional relatives from the part of the world where I first saw the light of day — West Alabama. This time the setting of my story...
Fiction

Claire Fullerton: A Place in the World

Southern Legitimacy Statement: a proud Southerner from Memphis, Tennessee. For nine years,  I worked in Memphis radio, beginning with a Memphis Music show on WSMS and ending on WEGR, on the infamous Beale Street. A Place in the World I used...
Fiction

Rob Bockman: Costume Party

Southern Legitimacy Statement: A resident of South Carolina and a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Rob Bockman writes fiction drawing from his experiences traveling across the Southeast, mostly through the lens of folklore and myth. The...
Fiction

LaVonne Roberts: Coming Home

As a girl whose more Texan out of Texas than in, I’m known as Gotham City Cowgirl in parts out East and as the girl with the Texas is larger than France t-shirt in France Mostly, I’m known for takin’...
Fiction

Ronnie Sirmans: 4ever

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born and raised in Georgia and that’s where I’ve returned. I’ve worked at Southern newspapers. And I enjoy tomato sandwiches each summer using tomatoes grown at home.
Fiction

Joe Halstead: Hoppy

SOUTHERN LEGITIMACY STATEMENT: It’s kind of wild where I grew up. I had my own gun at six years old. Ran down rabbits with my dad and helped beat their heads against the bumper of the truck, because they weren’t...
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...
Fiction

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...
Fiction

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...