Regina Williams
Southern Legitimacy Statement
I don’t think I’m Southern–I know. I grew up in northeast Arkansas on a small farm that didn’t have indoor plumbing until I was a teenager. My dad was a small country preacher who baptized a drunk in our pond amid the mud and cow manure. ‘Nough said?

G. C. Smith
Southern Legitimacy Statement
I’m for sure Southern cause I chill out on Budweiser while propped up in front of the boob tube watching NASCAR racing. I wrote a novel about murder in the world of Nextel Cup racing. The title is WHITE LIGHTNING. If that don’t make me Southern, nothing will.

William L. Lady
Southern Legitimacy Statement
I was born in the Republic of Honduras and my native language is Spanish. I had no conscious knowledge of the South when I was a boy, although I knew that my dad was different than most people around me. He had gray eyes, a blond moustache, and the steady confidence that you found among bush and airline pilots. His given name was Billy Seldon.

I once asked him where he was from. He told me that he had been born in a place called Arcansa, and that his family hailed from Kentoki and Tenesi, in the South. I never gave it much thought at the time. I figured that those places were somewhere to my south, probably between Guazucaran and Choluteca, or maybe down by the Gulf of Fonseca.

My dad had some strange customs too. Once in a while, he would get a bowl of a white concoction he called grits. One time, he tried to make me eat a cooked green matter, insisting that it was good for me. The more I eyeballed it, the less good it looked to me, and all I got out of that exercise was to be called a little mule from Misura.

The South began to get a little clearer when I was in high school, although this was not due to my school learning. What happened is that, by that time, we all had watched plenty of American war and cowboy films in the local movie houses. This enlightenment came at a good time, if the truth is told, because it allowed me to handle certain delicate situations in good form.

One day, I found myself confronted by a group of university students with scraggly Che Guevara beards. “Gringo, Imperialist, Yankee,” they called at me. To which I responded, “Look, senores, you can call me a Gringo if you wish, and you can call me an Imperialist, but careful with the Yankee bit because I ain’t no God damned Yankee!” They all laughed at this and told each other, “Ha, he is no Yankee, he must be a Rebel,” and we parted ways without much more ado.

Julie Walczesky
Southern Legitimacy Statement
I certify that I am a Southern belle in barefeet. I was born in the small town of Tryon, NC. Like most southern families, we lived next door to my granny,and I could make sweet tea and tater salad by the time I was three. I like my grits yellow and my chicken fried, my dogs are mutts and the best times I ever had were around a campfire with friendsor just hiking in the woods appreciating the beauty of this earth. City air will kill you, come breathe my pine.

Wade Ogletree
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
This here’s speculative southern fiction, set in Fairhope, Alabama; Fairhope’s like Carmel with sweat stains. It’s “speculative” ’cause I ’spec the main character’s parents were related. That would go to explain alot.

Enough of that. I’m Wade Ogletree, and for most of my life I was an Alabama expatriot living abroad (in California). I’ve suffered through years of anti-southern slurs, am glad to be back, and don’t mean to promulgate such slander in my fiction. No sir, my slander is far more original than that.